You really can't start a business without naming your business. Sometimes it's easy, but for many folks it's a lot of work. Here are some ideas to help you.

For many entrepreneurs, naming their business will be easy. They will know their product or service well, have an idea who they are trying to reach, and they will know how they are going to reach them. Then the entrepreneur will find that the very first name chosen is available and that will be the end of that.

Most aren't so lucky, though. Either the name is taken or the entrepreneur is completely at a loss as to what name to use. Maybe the entrepreneur doesn't even know how to start thinking about choosing a name in a way that will lead to results. But until the name is chosen, it's difficult if not impossible to start business.

Generally, three things are key to a name choice: availability, protectability and public appeal.

In Florida, availability can be crucial for a corporation or an LLC. The law recently changed to make LLC names exclusive (though you will still find many with the same names existing at the same time on the state's records--they're grandfathered). Florida business entitities also need to follow certain conventions. Unlike general partnerships, which exist and hold themselves out to the public with no formal naming requirements, formalized entities (corporations, limited partnerships, etc.) must provide notice to the public of their special character by including identification of their special status in their names. For that reason, business and nonprofit corporations typically use "Incorporated", "Corporation", "Inc.", or "Corp."  as suffixes to their names. In Florida, for-profit corporations may also use "Company". Limited partnerships use "Limited" or "L.P.", and limited liability companies use "Limited Liability Company", or "L.L.C." Professional Associations, a species of for-profit corporations, use "Professional Association", "P.A." or "Chartered". Corporations are restricted from using a few words and phrases without authorization, including Professional Engineer, Land Surveyor, "insurance" or "bank" (and derivatives thereof), the name of a political party, Disney and Olympic. Otherwise, other than the use of one of the required endings and the requirement that the corporation's name not be deceptively similar to another corporation's or trust's name or someone else's trademark (or to a government agency's name), you can be as creative as you like! For a quick check of name availability, go to the Florida Department of State Division of Corporations web site.

Remember, homonyms are not considered distinguishable, nor will variant spelling, adding "of Florida" or using a different suffix resolve a name conflict. "The Ready Mix Company" and "Redee Mixes of Florida, Inc." would be considered indistinguishable by the Department of State, so only one could be in use at any one time. Also, because of an old quirk in the Florida Statutes, two LLCs can have exactly the same name, although no new LLC can have the same name as an existing LLC.

Protectability in Florida is assured to any corporation or professional association, but as mentioned above, only recently did LLCs attain exclusive names. In either case, the entrepreneur will want to also check out the federal trademarks to look for a similar name using the new user search on the TESS system at http://www.uspto.gov/. If any active trademarks seem similar to the intended name and are in similar lines of business, the entrepreneur should choose another name so there is not a trademark dispute in the future. Note that using a part of a very strong trademark can cause trademark problems, even if the business line is quite different. Sleep Inns would have been "McSleep", but McDonalds was able to block the infringing trademark usage. The same goes for Auto Shack, which had to change its name to AutoZone.

Finally, public appeal is also important. Your business name may be completely fanciful (Amazon for Books, McDonalds for fast food, Ford for automobiles), in which case you would need to spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing in order to cement it in the public's mind. But you might also want to tie your business name to something more concrete. A geographical area, a product or service, a characteristic your prospective customers want to see themselves as possessing, even a height or weight can be worked into your business name. The best business names speak primarily to those who would be using them and do so without worrying about who might be missing the point. On the other hand, the clever name that says little to the uninitiated is unnecessarily limiting. And an ambiguous word in a name may need other words around it to provide clues to those hearing it for the first time. Is "Orlando Fencing" a specialty sporting goods shop or do they put up fences? Does "En Garde" sell sporting goods or alarm systems? "En Garde Fencing" gets a little closer, but "En Garde Fencing Foils & Togs" would nail it down.

No business name will ever be the perfect one to attract every potential customer and dissuade every potential competitor from taking a "me too" approach. But a smart entrepreneur will take the time to work up a name choice that comes as close as possible to that ideal.

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