How to Choose a Great Name for Your New Gym

Written by Jason Davis | Jun 25, 2020 12:14:17 AM

 

So you’re opening a gym and you have all the logistics figured out, but you just can’t think of the perfect gym name. Choosing the right name is incredibly important and will impact how members and potential members think about your gym. Don’t make a hasty decision. Go through this step-by-step process of picking the perfect name for your fitness studio or gym:

 

1) Brainstorm

Get out a notepad and paper and write down all the names you can think of. Try not to edit your ideas at this stage. Write down any names that come to mind from a catchy name to a simple name that describes what your gym specializes in.
 

Still having trouble coming up with options? Here are some well-known gym and studio names that might spark an idea for you:

1) Anytime Fitness
2) Brick Bodies
3) California Athletic Clubs
4) Chuze Fitness
5) Core Power Yoga
6) Crunch
7) Gold’s Gym
8) Latitude Sports Club
9) Life Time Fitness
10) Merritt Athletic Clubs
11) Midtown Athletic Clubs
12) Orangetheory Fitness
13) Powerhouse Gyms
14) The Edge Fitness Clubs
15) Total Woman Gym

 

2) Choose a Few You Like

Once you have at least 15 potential names down on paper, it’s time to go through them and remove the ones that don’t stand out to you. A good way to decide which ones to remove at this stage is to picture the name of the gym or studio on a big sign. Can you envision that name standing alone? Go through the list and narrow it down to 5-6 names that you like more than the rest.

 

3) Look Up Domain Names

Now that we live in such a digital age, a domain name is one of the most important factors in this decision. To ensure that you can get a good domain name, visit godaddy.com and type in some domain names that would work with your top name choices. This could narrow down the search quite a bit. Of course, if you really wanted a specific facility name, you could get creative with your domain name, but I generally recommend a “.com” extension if possible. Bonus points if you also do searches on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see if the social handles you want are available.

 

4) Do a Trademark Search

The last thing you want to have happen is to choose a name that someone else has already trademarked. Do the research now so it doesn’t become a problem later. You can easily search to see if your name is trademarked by going to the official United States Patent and Trademark Office website. If you find a result that fits the name you want, click on it to see exactly what it has been trademarked for. If you have any doubts, you might want to contact a lawyer to double-check.

 

5) Put It up to a Vote

At this point, you’ve probably lost a few of your top picks because the domain wasn’t available or the name was trademarked, so you might be down to 2 or 3 options. You can stop here if you really love one of the names, but if you still can’t choose between them, try sending out a survey to see which name resonates most with people.
 

Don’t have an audience yet? No worries. Survey Monkey has a great service where you can pay them to send out a survey for you to people in their database that fit your criteria. You can even choose to survey people in a particular location (i.e., where you are opening your fitness facility). The price depends on a few factors, but is generally very cost effective.

 

Once you receive the results from Survey Monkey, you should have the final gym name of your dreams. Good luck and let me know what name you choose by writing a comment in the Top Health Club Managers & Owners Facebook group.

 

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P.S. Did you know? ClubConnect is now the number one resource for health clubs and gyms. We power the education and development for over 4,500 health clubs and growing. Learn more about how we help health club managers, directors and owners here.