River + Wolf

In short

River + Wolf is a New York naming consultancy, founded in 2014 and led by Margaret Wolfson, whose name turns up in nearly every client review on its site. For each project it assembles namers, writers, trademark attorneys, global linguists and designers, and the output runs from single names and naming architecture to taglines, name stories and, through design partners, logos. It sits at #12 on our naming ranking.

The portfolio is long and mixed, with product names for JBL and Dremel beside work for De Beers Group, Ghostery and Asensus Surgical. Yond, a Dubai startup booking private jets on demand, got a name cut down from 'yonder' plus the tagline 'jets on request'. Merisan, a maritime company, got a name joining mer and san, with a signal-flag mark by Dezman Studio. A bitcoin staking platform became Lorenzo Protocol, after the Medici banker Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici.

Brand teams and founders who want a large pool of legally screened candidates and a principal who stays close to the work fit River + Wolf well; agencies abroad, a Korean advertising firm among them, also hire it for English-language naming. Visual identity goes through outside design partners, so a company that wants one studio to own its whole brand system, from strategy to guidelines, should look at a full branding agency instead.