Naming is an important business. Ask any parent expecting a child about the names they are considering. Ask a pet owner how they chose to name their pet. In an essay about love, David Whyte cautions us about naming a thing too early, before we get to know it.
Naming my business was equally important business. I wish I had read the David Whyte essay in advance of trying to name my business. The original name, KFHandprints, was chosen quickly, before I gave thought to what it was that I really wanted to say about what I was doing. It was also a name that a promotions company thought was “KFH and prints.”
I named it too early because I was in a rush to have a name for an expo where I was exhibiting. I was a relatively freshly minted hand analyst out to conquer the world. I had considered other names, ones that I sent to friends, family, old work colleagues and entrepreneurs I knew for their input. It seemed like such a big decision that I considered the numerology of all the names that I came up with so that the business would be successful. The people whose opinions I sought didn’t like the names. The application was due and so KFHandprints was born.
And still, it didn’t feel right. In the weeks before the expo, I spent more time soul searching, creating names, asking for feedback, getting nowhere and feeling frustrated. How was it that a name could be so hard? Two days before the expo and after another evening of playing with names, I literally said out loud, “I give up. I don’t really like the name KFHandprints but I just give up.”
The next morning, I opened a weekly newsletter by Alan Seale. I like what he has to say about things. He makes me think. This post was about leadership and how he tells leaders that they are healers, a moniker they don’t like or are uncomfortable with. Then I read a word I had never heard of, one that gave me goosebumps and a leap in my heart: “Haelen.”
Haelen is an Old English verb that means “to heal”. The literal translation means “to bring to wholeness”. That was it! Wholeness! It’s what happens during a hand reading when a client tells me it’s the first time that they have felt seen for who they truly are. Haelen Hands conveyed what it was that I wanted to do with hand readings.
Little did I know that several years after the naming of my business that the name would also be appropriate for another venue of healing, myofascial release in the tradition of John F. Barnes, which I have recently added to my services through Haelen Hands.
And while David Whyte wrote about naming love too fast, the idea applies to naming businesses too fast, or at least that was true in my case. Word to the wise, naming is important whether a business, a pet or a child. Take your time, say it out loud, play with it. How does it make you feel?
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