Shopify Store Naming: How to Pick a Brand Name That Ranks and Sticks

Why Your Shopify Store Name Matters More Than You Think

Your store name is your first SEO signal, your brand identity, and your customer’s first impression. Get it wrong and you’re either fighting for rankings with a generic keyword name, spending years correcting a spelling nobody can remember, or paying to rebrand once you’ve already built an audience.

This guide covers how to think about Shopify store naming in a way that serves both your brand and your search visibility.

The Two Main Naming Philosophies

Keyword-Rich Names

Names that include your product category. “London Coffee Roasters”, “UK Dog Beds”, “Organic Baby Clothes Co.”

Pros: Immediate clarity on what you sell. Small SEO advantage in domain name. Easy to rank for branded searches when brand + category are the same.

Cons: Hard to expand beyond the original category. Sound generic. Difficult to build emotional brand attachment. May look cheap or unambitious.

Invented/Abstract Brand Names

Names with no dictionary meaning or with meaning invented by the brand. Think Spotify, Lush, Gymshark, Glossier, Allbirds.

Pros: Unique, ownable, memorable. No category ceiling on expansion. Easier to trademark. Build genuine brand equity that doesn’t compete with generic search terms.

Cons: No inherent SEO value from domain. Requires more brand-building investment to communicate what you sell. Riskier if the invented word doesn’t resonate.

What Makes a Great Shopify Store Name

• Easy to spell from hearing it — If someone hears your name on a podcast, can they type it correctly? “Gymshark” — yes. “Knæpp” — no.
• Easy to say — If someone recommends you to a friend out loud, does the name roll off the tongue? Test it.
• One word or two words max — Three-word brand names are hard to remember and brand. “The Organic UK Baby Clothing Company” is not a brand name.
• Available as a .com domain — This is non-negotiable for serious stores. Check availability before you fall in love with a name. Also check .co.uk for UK stores.
• No trademark conflicts — Search the UK IPO trademark register and EUIPO database before registering. Being forced to rebrand after launch is expensive.
• Positive connotations across markets — If you plan to sell internationally, verify the name doesn’t mean anything negative in major languages.

The Domain Strategy

Register yourstore.com as your primary domain. If you’re UK-focused, also register yourstore.co.uk and redirect to .com. Buy common misspellings if your brand name is at all ambiguous. Avoid hyphens — yourstoreonline.com beats your-store-online.com every time for brand recall.

For UK stores, the .co.uk can actually outperform .com in UK Google results for local searches. If you’re exclusively UK-focused, .co.uk as primary is fine. If you have any ambitions beyond UK, .com is better.

Brainstorming Techniques That Work

• Compound words: Combine two relevant concepts. Shopify itself is “shop” + “ify”. Gymshark is “gym” + “shark”. What two concepts represent your brand?
• Evocative words: Words that evoke the emotion or aspiration of your category. A candle company called “Ember” or “Hearth” communicates warmth without saying “candles”.
• Founder name: Still works for craft, artisan, and premium brands. Tom Ford. Paul Smith. Less effective for mass-market products.
• Place-based: “Brooklyn Candle Studio”, “Edinburgh Gin”. Works when locality is a genuine selling point or brand story.
• Portmanteau: Combine parts of words. Pinterest = pins + interest. Works when the result sounds natural.

Tools to Check Name Availability

• Namecheap / GoDaddy — Domain availability check
• Shopify’s business name generator — Generates suggestions and checks domain availability simultaneously
• UK IPO trademark search — ipo.gov.uk to check for conflicting trademarks
• Instagram / TikTok handle check — You want consistent @brand handles across social
• Namecheck.com — Checks username availability across 100+ social platforms at once

Take the time to get this right before launch. Rebranding after building an audience costs far more — in money, lost SEO authority, and customer confusion — than spending two weeks finding the right name upfront.