One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when building your brand is, what on earth are you going to call it? You’ve probably Googled other brands in your industry. Or you even tried to see if there’s a funky, cool way to spell your brand. You finally find a name that you’re totally in love with. But to your utter dismay you find yourself against a wall.

You find out that the web address is already taken, the twitter handled you chose has 10 different iterations that’s in circulation and the only Instagram handle that’s available is the name of your brand with a number behind it. Now what? You let out a frustrated sigh and just like that you’re back to square one. No name, no brand. Of course you resort to just using your name and even that isn’t available. Does it sound familiar?

It’s not uncommon for brands to go through this vicious cycle in the beginning when it comes to naming. So before you start buying up web addresses and creating a social media platform, here’s some brand naming mistakes you want to avoid:

Don’t Be Brand Twins

Break the status quo, it’s ok go ahead. When you create a brand name that’s similar or the same to other brands it’s easy for customers to confuse one with the other. For example Domino’s Pizza and Domino Sugar or Dove (soap) and Dove (chocolate) and here’s another one Finlandia (Cheese) and Finlandia (Vodka).

You Didn’t Test It

It’s exciting when you come up with a name, but even though you love it doesn’t mean everyone will. Did you do an A/B test or even posting your brand name on Quora or Facebook to ask for feedback from strangers. Most of the time your family and friends will want to be supportive and if you name is plain terrible they won’t tell you. That’s why asking strangers is the ideal way to go.

Definitely Ask Siri or Alexa

This might sound silly. But when you say your brand’s name can Siri or Alexa spell it? If they have a hard time spelling it then maybe it’s best to try a different name. As voice activation becomes the next wave you want to make sure that your brand’s name can be recognized by this function.