Are you planning to launch (or re-launch) an Intranet?
If so, you may be wondering if giving it a little personality with a name is worth it…
Remember, you will refer to it all the time: after meetings, at the water cooler, when pointing someone to the events calendar, or when submitting a documents. Imagine yourself saying it - “intranet this..”, “intranet that..”, - no fun right? But seriously, building a culture of “fun” around a work practice greatly impacts user adoption.
Today, we will help you come up with your intranet name with—we hope—everything you need: lists of words you can combine to come up with intranet names, guidelines for the creative process, and even an intranet name generator!
People-like intranet names
IBM Watson, Alexa (Amazon), and Siri (Apple), Lynda (Linkedin), Pablo (a social media tool) are part of the trend of humanizing software (and specifically artificial intelligence) by giving it a name—and even a personality through the UX and UI. Why not consider a person’s name to give your intranet a human touch?
- Benji
- Jarvis (yes, like Iron Man’s AI assistant)
- Jasper
- Oliver
- Marie
- Pablo
- Claire
- Allegra
- Eleanor
- Lynda
- Sarah
- Roger
- Emma
- Galileo
- Olive
- Sophia
- Charlie
- Monty
- Elvis (a big fan here :D)
- Dwight
Greek alphabet
No exercise of finding names is complete without a smattering of Greek alphabet names. In fact, the Greek alphabet is daily used in tech, science, and engineering affairs.
- Beta
- Gamma
- Delta
- Epsilon
- Zeta
- Eta
- Theta
- Iota
- Kappa
- Lambda
- Mu
- Nu
- Xi
- Omicron
- Pi
- Rho
- Sigma
- Tau
- Upsilon
- Phi
- Chi
- Psi
- Omega
Media-like names
If you’re treating your intranet as an internal content publishing portal or a newsletter you might want to consider a media or blog name. Here are some common words used in the written media space.
- Update
- Journal
- Times
- Herald
- Pulse
- Buzz
- Advance
- Report
- Studio
- Forecast
- Scoop
- Review
- Report
- Insights
- Insider
- Classroom
- Whiteboard
- Bulletin
- Roundup
Prefixes
- ante-
- anti-
- circum-
- co-
- de-
- dis-
- em-, en-
- epi-
- ex-
- extra-
- fore-
- homo-
- hyper-
- il-, im-, in-, ir-
- im-, in-
- infra-
- inter-, intra-
- macro-
- micro-
- mid-
- mis-
- mono-
- non-
- omni-
- para-
- post-
- pre-
- re-
- semi-
- sub-
- super-
- therm-
- trans-
- tri-
- un-
Suffixes
- -able, -ible
- -al
- -esque
- -ful
- -ic, -ical
- -ious, -ous
- -ish
- -ive
- -less
- -y
- -ly
- -ward, -wards
- -wise
- -ism
- -ist
- -ity, -ty
- -ment
- -ness
- -ship
- -sion, -tion
- -ate
- -en
- -ify, -fy
- -ise, -ize
- uni-acy
- -al
- -ance, -ence
- -dom
- -er, -or
Source: Prefixes and Suffixes list
Locations
Conceptualizing intranets as a location is not crazy at all. After all, in a world where you work in a “team” which covers the four corners of the planet, your intranet is probably the only true congregation ground you have. So, if you want to consider using words referring to a place to identify your intranet, here is a list of location-related words you can combine to come up with your intranet names:
- Hub
- Factory
- Marketplace
- Center
- Room
- Space
- Point
- Station
- Office (Like HyperOffice)
- Spot
- Venue
- Residence
- Podium
- Lobby
- Zone
- Headquarter
- Area
Community-related words
One of the most common goals of an intranet is improving internal communications and fostering a corporate culture. Some ideas:
- Club
- Elite
- Group
- Meet-up
- Team
Best practices for naming your intranet
We don’t want to disrupt your creative flight, but consider the following guidelines, if you will:
- Consider literary figures such as alliterations (e.g. Mass Message or Roger Rabbit), sarcasm (e.g. calling your intranet “The Unseen” or “The Unwanted”), or metonymies (e.g. the oval office to refer to the administration).
- Personalize it for your audience; try to avoid being generic. If you work on internal communications in the legal industry, you may call your intranet “Daily Dais”, for instance, just as an example.
- Be consistent with your company’s brand. Don’t be fun if your company is “corporate” and don’t simply think of acronyms like ICS (i.e. Internal Communication System) if your company has a young, fun environment.
- Find inspiration in newsletter names and specifically employee newsletter ideas names. Both mediums are intended to address similar communication goals.
https://anadea.info/tools/online-business-name-generator/software/search
Intranet names generator
Finally, we thought you may want to automatically generate a list of intranets names instead of going through lists, combining words, and coming up with ideas. Anadea has created an amazing tool that generates dozens of software product names after you set a keyword.
Another great tool is Namelix which, besides giving you names, also suggest logos and brand identities for your future app (or intranet).
What’s next
If you’re planning to build or improve your intranet, we recommend the following:
- Intranets best practices
- 7 real intranets examples
- Sharepoint alternatives
- 9 intranets tools to boost collaboration
- How to build your own intranet
