The Name That Almost Wasn't

A project needs a name before it can be anything real, even to yourself. The first name felt obvious when it came to me: HR Saathi.

A project needs a name before it can be anything real, even to yourself. Before it has one, it just floats around in your head as "the thing," described differently every time someone asks, never quite landing the same way twice.

The first name felt obvious when it came to me: HR Saathi. Simple, warm, easy to say out lou it captured exactly the idea I had in mind, a companion in the hiring process, someone in your corner. I got attached to it faster than I should have, the way you get attached to the first version of anything before you've stress-tested it.

Then came the unglamorous part nobody tells you about naming something checking if it's actually usable. A quick search turned up someone else already sitting on a closely related domain, registered not long before I even started looking. Not identical, but close enough that it created real risk legal risk, confusion risk, the kind of thing that could quietly undermine everything before it even had a chance to exist properly.

I remember the specific deflation of that discovery. It wasn't just a name it was the first real identity the idea had, and now I had to let it go before it had even properly begun. I sat with that for longer than I probably needed to, mentioning it once at a tea break in a tone that was more annoyed than the situation probably deserved. My friend just shrugged and said "naya soch le, koi bada masla nahi hai" which, in the moment, felt easier said than done.

Finding the replacement took longer than the first name had, precisely because I was more careful the second time. I wanted something that still felt like it belonged to the same idea professional but not stiff, easy to say, easy to spell, nothing that would collide with someone else's territory this time. When it finally clicked, it didn't feel as instantly right as the first one had. It felt right in a steadier way considered, checked, actually mine.

I think about that swap sometimes as a small, early lesson in something bigger: how easily you can fall in love with the first version of an idea, and how much better the second, more careful version usually turns out to be once you've actually done the work of checking it holds up.