A Business Name--Have you noticed all the good ones are gone?

(This is part of a series on my blog called Eating a Whale--My Self-pub story.)

I know people who have literally have spent months, even years, coming up with a name for their business. I decided I had thirty minutes. That's just the way I do things.

First off, I wanted it very clear that the company I was creating was a publishing company, so I knew my name would be BLANK Publishing. That was easy enough. (I didn't want "Press" because in the age of e-publishing that seemed old fashioned like a printing press. Make sense? Well, it did to me.)

Now came the task of filling in the blank. I thought of all of the obvious ideas:

1- My last name
2 - My maiden name
3 - My husband's first name
4 - My husband's mother's last name
5- My mother's brother's aunt's last name
6 - You get the point

Each time I googled one of these names with the word "publishing" there was already a company with that name. At this point, I decided NOT to go with the whole relative name thing. Instead, I pulled out my 21-year-old copy of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

I closed my eyes, let the pages fall open, and pointed with my finger.

"xerophthalmia"

Hmm. Xerophthalmia Publishing.

Nope.

So I tempted fate and tried it again. The fifth time was the charm.

Levanter \lƏ-vant-Ər\ n. a strong easterly Mediterranean wind.

That was it.

Levanter Publishing.

I had five minutes left of my allotted thirty to find out if http://www.levanter.com/ was available and if Levanter Publishing was an available name for a business in the state of Utah.

A quick trip online to GoDaddy.com and to One Stop Utah Business Registration told me I was good to go.

Whew. Step one, done. Cost: Zero so far.