Project naming: How can abstract goals become selection criteria when starting from scratch?

When you start a project from scratch, you often have a rough sense of what you want to accomplish but no clear way to measure whether you are on track. Naming the project sounds like a minor administrative step, but it is actually one of the first moments where you are forced to make a choice about what the project is. A name commits you to a framing. If you call something a "migration," you have already decided the old thing exists and the new thing replaces it. If you call it an "exploration," you have left room for the outcome to be uncertain. The act of choosing a name surfaces the assumptions you were carrying silently.

One practical way to use this is to treat candidate names as test statements. Write down three or four possible names and ask what each one implies about scope, timeline, and success. A name like "Phase One Refresh" implies there will be a Phase Two and that the current state is worth keeping in some form. A name like "Clean Slate Redesign" implies you are willing to discard existing structures. If a name implies something you are not actually prepared to commit to, that mismatch tells you where your real constraint is. You can then adjust either the name or the plan, but at least the gap is visible.

When several people are involved, disagreements about the name are usually disagreements about priority. If one person insists on a name that emphasizes speed and another prefers a name that emphasizes quality, they are not arguing about words. They are revealing different expectations about what matters most. Rather than voting on a name, you can use the disagreement to ask directly: what does each person consider the primary measure of success? This turns a naming discussion into a scope discussion without anyone having to admit they were unclear about their own goals.

A useful habit is to revisit the name once the project has run for a while. If the name no longer describes what the team is actually doing, that is a signal that scope has drifted or that the original framing was incomplete. You do not need to rename the project formally every time this happens, but noticing the gap gives you a concrete moment to check whether your selection criteria still match your daily decisions. The name becomes a lightweight reference point you can compare against reality, rather than just a label on a folder.