Day 1: widen without judging
Run a business name generator in all three pattern families — coined shorts (Zently), compounds (Nova Labs), formal pairs (Vertex Group) — and force 50+ candidates onto one list before allowing any criticism. Early judgment kills the strange-but-right names; volume first, taste later.
Day 2: cut to five with criteria
Score every candidate 1–5 on four axes: sayability (can you order coffee with it?), relevance (does it gesture at your market?), extendability (will it still fit in five years?), and distinctiveness (would it stand out in a list of competitors?). Keep the five with the highest total, not the ones a single person loves.
Days 3–7: clear the five
Run the four checks on each finalist in order of cheapness: domain availability, social handle availability, trademark search in your class, and the phone test (say it aloud, spell it for someone). One failed check demotes a candidate; two kills it. Promote replacements from your list of fifty as needed.
Patterns that age well (and badly)
Ages well: two-syllable coined words, nature or craft compounds, geographic pairs. Ages badly: puns on current trends, numbers replacing letters (Shoply4U), anything needing a pronunciation footnote. If a name needs explaining, it explains itself to nobody new.
Commit on the deadline
When two finalists both pass, decide by coin-flip-weighted intuition: which one would you rather print on an invoice? Register the domain and entity within 48 hours of deciding — naming deadlocks re-open the moment someone new joins the conversation.