What's in a name? Quite a bit.
Why did we call ourselves 'Choose to Thinq'?
The story* goes back a few years. (Our founders) Harish and Ramanand had begun collaborating on a bunch of projects: on quizzing, innovation, and related areas. What could be a suitable label to capture all of these? Picking names is never easy. A conversation during an unplanned afternoon walk in the University of Pune campus led to some brainstorming. One inspiration was the book 'Made to Stick', a personal favourite of both.
"What we are doing is to make people think…"
"So let's call this 'Made to Think’".
"…But we can't force people to think. They should opt to do so. We need to encourage them to think."
"Then, Choose to Think?"
The 'k' at the end gave way to a 'q'. Since ‘good questions’ played a big role in this enterprise, the tweaked spelling enabled the brand to reflect that (and also solved the problem of username availability for different online channels!)
Thus Choose to Thinq was born. The lessons this exercise taught us:
Inspiration can come from anywhere. Keep your eyes, ears and minds open.
Good names are hard to come by. If you spot a phrase that you like, note it down. It will come in handy some other time.
Build on ideas. Don't shut the door on them too early.
Language is powerful. Languages are even more powerful. Spread your linguistic radar far and wide.
It's easy to keep whirling around looking for a good name. If you can't find the 'perfect' name, then go for 'good enough'. With time, repetition, and the mere exposure effect, even an average name will start to turn in results.
*Unlike many founding stories, this is actually a true story.