As soon as Ed’s Diner broke the news in the blogosphere last week about a new restaurant coming to Thea’s Landing along Tacoma’s Foss Waterway, the sophomoric jokes sprang up.

The restaurant’s name? Woody’s Wharf. Tacoma has Johnny’s Dock and Bob’s Pier. Why not a Woody’s Wharf? You can make up your own punch lines.

“One of the things that you’re striving for in a (business) name is a sense of authenticity. And that’s difficult in the world in which we live,” said Danny Altman, founder and CEO of A Hundred Monkeys, a California company that helps start-up businesses pick names and helps established companies, such as Microsoft, name their products.

“If there really is a ‘Woody’ who you can look at and talk to, or if there’s a story attached to it that’s really got some local interest and some relevant connection to the business, then Woody’s Wharf could work,” Altman said.

Meet Coy Wood – aka “Woody.” He once owned a Woody’s Wharf restaurant on a man-made lake near Salt Lake City. In partnership with his daughter, his son-in-law and his wife, he’s re-creating the casual dining in a boating motif on the Foss Waterway.

And you’ll find him greeting guests and working the restaurant when it opens by mid-July.

As a kid, I remember frequent trips from Auburn to visit relatives in Eastern Washington. Inevitably, among all the fruit stands from which we could choose, dad always opted for Tiny’s Fruit Stand in Cashmere. Not only did Tiny’s have terrific cherry cider, but you got to talk to Tiny, who was anything but tiny.

Naming a business – or renaming one – should involve an extensive and exhaustive process, Altman said.

“Naming your business,” he said, “is one of those existential moments that defines the rest of the life of your company. This is not something that you float out there, see what happens, and change if you don’t like it. A name is not tweakable. You only get once chance to do the right thing.”

I’ll bet, as you travel around, you run across business names that make you say, “Hey, that’s clever.” Or, “What in the world were they thinking?”

Altman says people starting a business should think of their new venture’s name as they do a best friend.

“Everyone can be a branding expert if you can access the information you’ve got in your (mental) database about human behavior and about what makes two people click,” Altman said. “What makes you attracted to one person and repelled by another? With your business, you’re trying to create a magnet, something that’s trying to draw people close to you.”

For example, Altman worked with a Silicon Valley job placement company that found jobs for people out of business and engineering schools for a few years who couldn’t find work in their field. To attract those clients, Altman named the placement company Cruel World.

“We look at it, when somebody just punts on the name, as a lost opportunity,” he said.

To come up with name, Altman advises the following steps:

 • Naming your business should come early in the process of setting it up. Don’t wait until the last minute.

 • Ask yourself a series of questions: What am I naming? What’s my point of view of the world? What business am I really in? Who am I trying to connect with?

 • Brainstorm many name options.

 • Don’t fall in love with one name option too quickly. Let the choices simmer.

 • When you think you’ve found one you like, do some research to make sure no one already owns that name or has one too similar to it.

“The first job of marketing,” Altman said, “is to distinguish you from the competition. That means doing something different. Don’t pick a name that makes you one of the trees in the forest and then spend the rest of your marketing budget trying to stand out. Fight the competition, not yourself.”

In San Francisco, a genius professor of computer science figured out a way to send giant files of data back and forth across large corporate computer networks with multiple office locations. The private company started as NBT Technology. NBT stood for Next Best Thing. But when the company leaders decided to take the company public, they hired Altman’s firm to rebrand it.

They came up with the name Riverbed. Not only does it have allusions to the movement of large data files over a network, but two of the four top leaders of the company were fly fishermen. So the name resonated on a couple of levels.

“You can’t develop a strong name from a list of attributes on a research report,” Altman said. “It needs to come from someplace deeper. We think that every name should tell a story. And we have yet to meet a client who doesn’t have a good one. Sometimes it takes a little digging.”

Which leads to Altman’s final word of advice – don’t dismiss any name idea too quickly.

For example, why would anyone name a computer company Apple? Imagine the critique in the boardroom: full of worms, easily bruised, fall from grace, doesn’t sound like a computer. No way.

Or Virgin Air: It says, “We’re new at this,” nobody will take us seriously, unprofessional, religious people will be offended. Bring on the next option.

“One thing that strong names have in common,” Altman said, “is the ease with which they can be attacked and dismissed. … If there are a dozen people in the room and you all have to agree on a flavor of ice cream, it’s going to be vanilla, not Cherry Garcia.”

So, come July, you’ll find me eating at Woody’s Wharf, no matter how much it makes some of you giggle.

Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785

dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com

Start it up with our help

Are you planning to start your own business? How would you like some help naming it – and some publicity to kick things off?

Send an e-mail to dan.voelpel@thenews tribune.com. In it describe the business venture you plan to start and when you hope to start it. Include your name, address and telephone number.

Business columnist Dan Voelpel will work with corporate naming consultant Danny Altman of A Hundred Monkeys to choose one of the business concepts.

Voelpel will devote a column to that entrepreneur and his or her business venture – and invite readers to brainstorm names and submit them. In a follow-up column, Voelpel will describe what the entrepreneur finally decides to name the new business.