Domain Name Brainstorming: How to Generate Available, Brandable Domain Ideas
By Bill Hartzer · Hartzer Consulting & DNAccess
After more than two decades working in the domain name industry, the most common mistake I see isn't a bad domain choice — it's stopping the brainstorm after five or six ideas and settling for whatever's left available. A better process generates dozens or hundreds of candidates first, then narrows down, rather than narrowing down from a list that was never large enough to begin with.
Start with word lists, not a single name
Rather than trying to think of "the" domain name, build two short lists: one of core words that describe the business (what it does, who it serves, the industry), and one of modifiers (a qualifier, a geography, a common suffix like "hub," "co," or "labs"). The Domain Name Generator combines the two lists, strips the spaces automatically, and appends whatever TLDs you choose — turning two short lists of five or six words each into dozens of candidates in one pass, in both a concatenated form ("brandwordco.com") and a hyphenated form ("brand-word-co.com") so you can compare both side by side.
Choosing a TLD
.com remains the default expectation for most businesses and most visitors, and it's still the safest choice when it's available at a reasonable price for a name you actually want. That said, it is not the only legitimate option: country-code TLDs (.co, .io) and newer generic TLDs (.shop, .dev) have both become normal in their respective industries, and a strong name on a well-matched alternative TLD often serves a business better than a weak, compromised name forced onto .com. The Domain Name Generator accepts any TLD you type in — including multi-part ones like .co.uk — specifically so you can compare candidates across several TLDs at once rather than checking them one at a time.
Hyphens: use sparingly, not never
The domain industry's general advice against hyphenated domains is directionally correct but often overstated. A single hyphen separating two clear words is a reasonable compromise when the non-hyphenated version is already taken and the alternative is a much weaker name; several hyphens, or a hyphen inserted in a way that makes the name hard to say out loud or read on a business card, is where it becomes a real liability. If you're testing both forms, read each candidate aloud before deciding — a domain that's awkward to say is a domain that's hard to grow a brand around, regardless of whether it's hyphenated.
What this tool does not do
The Domain Name Generator only generates candidate strings — it does not check whether a name is registered, query WHOIS or RDAP data, or make any external calls at all. That's a deliberate choice: availability changes by the minute, and baking a point-in-time availability check into a free tool would give you false confidence the moment it went stale. Once you have a shortlist, check availability directly with a registrar, and if a name is already registered but appears unused, look into its WHOIS history before assuming it's abandoned and easy to acquire.
Before you commit to a name
Beyond availability, a shortlist is worth checking against a few other things: whether the name (or something confusingly similar) is already trademarked in your industry, whether the matching social media handles are available, and whether the name is easy for someone to spell correctly after hearing it once, out loud, with no context. A name that fails that last test will cost you traffic to typos and lookalike domains for as long as you use it.