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One of the things serial entrepreneurs are consistent challenged with, and often waste a lot of time on, is a name. It makes sense, for me personally I always find it easier to work on a project once it has an identity… It sort of defines it. It’s a bit like when you have a child, binding with your child really kicks to the next level once you’ve decided on their name – even before they’ve been born.

Unless you’re a born marketer (which, if you are, is awesome) a lot of time can be sunk into thinking up a name and finding an available domain for a business venture. When you think about it the investment of this time never really gets recovered, especially if the naming bit happens before the idea is mature.

So without further ado – here are my 5 favorite sites for domain/business name generation – ranging from the wacky and hands free to quite sophisticated and tailorable.

1. Dotomator

Dotomator is a very neat approach – basically you input the word or words you want and select from a range of categories. The system generates options for you, and from their you can automatically check for domain availability, and even register if you like.

2. Bust-A-Name

Bust A Name, possibly named using its own system, is very cool if you already have a feel for what you want your business or domain name to be. You create a list of words that are candidates for inclusion into your name, and Bust A Name automatically creates combination’s and variations, and test their domain availability on the fly for whatever suffixes (.com, .net, .org, etc…). Their are options like name variations (e.g. Flicker becomes Flickr), pluraliztion (e.g. car becomes cars), and a host of other options. Very swish and full of AJAX-y goodness.

3. Nameboy

The old favorite. You put in two words and it generates a list of options, including shortened versions of the words you’ve entered and combinations with additions of common “buzz words”.

4. 1-2-3- Finder

Similar to Nameboy, but with a bunch of dictionaries to choose from. The thing I like about this site is how it provides info and statistics on domains that are currently registered.

5. Dotomator Web 2.0

This one is for if you get lazy or bored, but gee whiz it comes out with some cool ideas. One button – Generate Name! – and this little beauty spits out random “Web 2.0″ sounding names, presumably from a database of combination’s. Some Dotomator Web 2.0 examples from a short play include:

Qualoo
Brainzone
Triyo
Pixonyx
Nblab
Fivepad
Zoolia
Demitri

Another good source for inspiration is the Twitter Trends engine… An occasional glance yields some interesting trains of thought.

I was thinking how cool it would be to create a domain name generator that does a word analysis of news articles, blog posts, or whatever web page you pointed it at based on probabilities… Does anyone know if this exists?

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