What's in a name?

As the owner of a new company in a cluttered world, I can speak, with experience, about the challenge of choosing a company name. Apart from the obvious requirement that one be able to attach some meaning to the name – something relevant to one’s business and, hopefully, one’s potential clients – the bigger hurdles are very practical ones: Is the name eligible to be approved for incorporation, and is a website address available?

I won’t bore you with the list of names we came up with that failed on one or both of these basic requirements – except to say you would be amazed at how many supposedly “unique” and “imaginative” names are already registered. (In a moment of desperation, we even tried “WTF Communications” – but thanks to the World Taekwondo Federation, that was taken, too.) Omar El Akkad, the Toronto Globe & Mail’s technology reporter, lamented the problem recently in a story headlined “When all the good names are taken.” 

So, what is the meaning of The Lanes, you may ask? When all else fails, look out your window for inspiration. Our offices in Toronto’s historic St. Lawrence Market district are surrounded by numerous narrow lanes, and two of them intersect nearby: Colborne Lane and Leader Lane. Colborne Lane runs behind a beautiful row of Victorian storefronts, including five brick and cut-stone structures known as the Milburn building, which were designed by Edward James Lennox – more famously known as the architect of Toronto’s Old City Hall and Casa Loma. This row of buildings is pictured in the banner on The Lanes’ website.

Thus was born The Lanes Strategic Communications, Inc. 

And, in case you were wondering, “the-lanes.com” (sigh) wasn’t available…