You have decided to strike out on your own to start a company. One of the first important decisions you need to make is: “What should I call this business?” We have all struggled to find the perfect name for our companies that will project just the right image of our business.

In some ways, finding a name for a company is a lot harder than naming your child since you can buy a book on children’s names. Where on Amazon.com can you find a book of company names? If you are Jewish like me, you just need to pick the name of a dead relative that means something to you. That makes it very simple.

Dogs and cats can have quirky names since you’re really the only one who will be calling your pet most of the time. Almost any name will do. If you have trouble, there are the most popular dog names to choose from that any kid would love like Rocky, Buddy, Buster, Lady, Princess and Ginger.

Many years ago, it was just as easy to name your company. The business owner just used his or her last name. If the entrepreneur had a partner, both names were used. Look at C.R. Walgreens. I bet he had an easy time finding a name for his store.

Hughes Aircraft, Hewlett- Packard, Ford and Woolworths are other examples. These people spent little time thinking of a name because your company was simply an extension of you. You branded your business with your name. You were the business. End of company image.

Then we got into the machine age where all the names were initials or acronyms. Companies were simply called IBM or GM. My favorite company in the 1980s that took this naming convention to an extreme was called NBI (”Nothing But Initials”).

Sun (actually “SUN”) Microsystems got its name not from the star but from “Stanford University Network”. Yahoo! (actually “YAHOO”) is an acronym that stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. The founders insist that they liked the name because “yahoo? means “rude,” “unsophisticated,” and “uncouth.”

In the technology age, names had to begin with “X” or “Z.” In the Internet era, a company name ended in “.com” or began with an “I” or an “E” in order to jump on the bandwagon. In 2001, we returned those letters to the alphabet and all those companies dropped the “.com” part of their name as they tried to disassociate themselves from the Internet bubble burst.

For example, Chicago-based Participate.com changed its name to Participate Systems and went from building online communities to delivering enterprise systems for customer service.

Today, the choice of a company name is made more difficult. Aside from a service mark search, we also need to choose names by the availability of their Web address. This selection process proliferated Web sites like NameBoy, which “brainstorms” with the user on possible URL selections.

When Mike Flynn and Tracy Thirion decided to launch a consumer brand-building firm called Bamboo Worldwide, they chose their name in an unusual manner. Thirion says she was reading an article about “a think-tank company in Atlanta that compares how ideas develop to how bamboo grows. They take six months to let their ideas stew before they present them to the client.”

Thirion and Flynn learned that during bamboo’s first years of life, it only grows a few inches a year and develops a strong, integrated root system that runs deep beneath the surface. Around the fourth year, it breaks out of the soil hundreds of yards from its base and quickly sends stalks to the sky at a rate of more than 80 feet per year.

They believed that their consumer brand-building process is best served by looking to the example of bamboo.

Developing a strong root system can result in exponential growth and a consumer relationship with the strength to last a lifetime. Bamboo’s underground root network (that results in shoots popping up in the neighbor’s yard) heavily supporting their company’s “word-of-mouth” strategy.

Alternately, most law firms and accounting firms these days still bear the names of their founders or the abbreviation of their names like PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and KPMG.

When Art Mertes of the Synergy Law Group considered the goals of his new firm and weighed them against the norms for naming a law firm, though, he came up with a different result The usual practice is to take the names of the founding partners and place them in alphabetical order.

Mertes, though, wanted to “brand and establish name recognition more effectively, [have] the ability to obtain service mark protection for the name on a national basis and eliminate the egocentric dynamics typically arising in association with firm naming rights in boutique and mid-size firms.”

Julie Scott did a similar thing when naming her consulting firm Bluepoint Advisors. She wanted to emphasize her team and not just her founder’s role in the company (although I had recommended she call her firm “Great Scott, Inc.”).

Scott says the term “bluepoint” comes from bluepoint oysters, which produce pearls.

“This parallels the ‘pearls of wisdom’ garnered from our firm’s highly experienced professionals and industry-based approach (which, like a pearl, require years to fully develop),” she said. “Since our team members have an average of 15 years of operational experience, this as a clear advantage compared to the traditional model of recent college graduates who lack significant ‘in-the-trenches’ experience.”

Scott also believes that blue is a warm, refreshing and soothing tone that conveys the firm’s practical, softer approach. She says it reflects the professionalism and integrity of her team. The term “point” demonstrates her firm’s hands-on, “to-the-point” approach. Again, she’s conveying her commitment to “doing the work and not just talking about it.”

I suggest that you keep the naming of your company simple. Don’t use your last name in your company unless you want the business to be about you as the brand. It is much harder to extract yourself from it or sell your company if it bears your name. Keep it easy to spell, remember and recognize. Don’t spend a lot of money finding a name.

Set a low budget and stick with it. You never know if your company will succeed, and in a year, you’ll have to spend money to find another name.

Finally, remember that you will find customers and keep them not because you have a memorable name. Customers will buy from you when you have products or services that solve their problems. They will continue to buy from you when you provide excellent customer service. Above everything else, these two things will make them remember your company name.