As regular readers of our blogs know, we’re big fans of technology – especially if it can help make lives easier, interesting or more fun.  As a result I ‘follow’ a number of Tweeters on Twitter who write about the subject (as well as kitchens of course!) and I came across an article from BusinessInsider that sought to explain how some of the most famous technology brand names came into being.

For example, I bet you didn’t know that Twitter was originally going to be called ‘Status’ and then ‘Twitch’ before the founders stumbled across the name we know today?  Or that Google, in its earliest version, was going to be called ‘Back Rub’ before changing its name (which stems from the mathematical term googol) to the one used by 92% of the UK population today.  And, finally, in 1994 Jerry Yang and David Filo renamed their company, “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” to…Yahoo! (I think they should’ve stuck with the original!)

All very interesting you may ask but what’s this got to do with kitchens?

To be honest, not a lot – other than the fact that rarely do we go to see a potential client for the first time and we’re not asked the origin of our name!

But before I answer the title question readers need to understand a tiny part of our family history.  Our mother and father owned a guest house in Cambridge for 20 years from the early 1970s.  Stuck for a name they amalgamated the Christian names of their two sons, my brother Bill (William) and me, Ross, and created ‘Rosswill’.  Mum was very proud of her ingenuity but, unfortunately for her, we both hated it (the number of times at school I heard ‘Rosswill…what?!’)

So as we tried to think of a name for our new fitted kitchen business, you can guess what mum’s first thought was!  With that idea instantly dispatched, we continued thinking!

We wanted a name that reflected a quality, design-led feel.  A name that would cut through the plethora of names like ‘ABC kitchens’ or ‘Bloggs’ discount kitchens’ which, rightly or wrongly, we felt wouldn’t allow us to promote the brand in the ways we knew we’d have to in order to become established.

More mundanely, we also needed a name that wasn’t already registered with Companies House and, almost as importantly, had a web domain name available.

So as the three of us debated a name we dug back a bit further into the family’s history.  Mum’s a real girl of the Fens, having been born and raised by our grandparents (obviously!), Bob and Rene Nicholas who lived at Castlehythe in Ely, Cambridgeshire.  The more observant reader will by now have worked out where the name Nicholas Hythe came from (email me at r.halliday@nicholashythe.co.uk if you haven’t!)

We registered the name and the domain name and, as they say, the rest is history.

In all I seem to remember the process taking about a week in total but, having been through the process, I have a lot of sympathy for new businesses searching for that elusive business name that reflects their brand and what they want it to stand for!

And that way you won’t get stuck with a brand name like ‘Rosswill’!

For more information about Nicholas Hythe Kitchen Design Studio please go to www.nicholashythe.co.uk or telephone 01480 468598 or email us at info@nicholashythe.co.uk

For hundreds of pictures of kitchens we’ve installed for delighted clients please go to www.facebook.com/NicholasHytheKitchenDesignStudio