When you're naming a business or a product, you look at words through a different lens than the novelist or historian. They think in sentences, paragraphs, chapters, or even volumes; you must think in single-word nuggets of meaning. Your job is to distill the essence -- and even the unknown future -- of your product or company in one, or sometimes two, perfectly suited words.

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Nancy Friedman is the chief wordworker at verbal-branding consultancy Wordworking, and the author of a fine blog on naming, branding and more called Away With Words. Nancy has named a venture-capital firm, a laser hair-removal device, a mobile-money service, and many other companies and products. A former journalist, she still writes or ghostwrites articles, speeches, white papers, and books.