Lexicon Branding

In short

Lexicon Branding works from Sausalito, just north of San Francisco, and does one thing: it creates names. Founded in 1982 by David Placek, it says it has developed more than 3,900 brand names across 23 countries, and the record includes Pentium, PowerBook, BlackBerry, Sonos, Swiffer and Dasani. Linguistics, naming research and trademark screening sit in-house, and it now invests its own capital behind some clients. It is #1 on our naming ranking.

Recent work leans heavily on AI. For Meta Superintelligence Labs it named Muse, the personal AI agent launched in September 2026, picking a one-syllable word that tested as easy to say in every language screened. Google DeepMind's creative platform became Antigravity. For Codeium it named Windsurf, an agentic coding product that reached 500,000 users in three months; the company later rebranded itself as Windsurf, which says something about how well the name held.

Companies naming themselves, a flagship product or a whole naming system, and ready to pay for linguistic and trademark checks across markets, are its natural clients, from early-stage startups to the Fortune 500. Lexicon does not design logos or identity systems, so the visual brand needs a separate studio, and a team that only wants a quick list of candidate names will find the process heavier than the job requires.