While much of this is good advice, the "name that says what you do" is tricky. Product names should say what they do, but companies sometimes find it more useful to remain vague.
Consider: Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon. None of these words had, when invented, any associations in the public mind. This allows those companies to grow and change their brands and their focus.
Imagine if Amazon had been called "Bookery". Or if Google were called "Searchio". Great names for what those companies started doing, completely misleading now -- especially in Amazon's case.
If Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay were late-comers (much later to Google's search dominance), would these companies have used these names?
Particularly now, I would assume it is much more difficult to "brand" a company (a search engine, auction site, or super-powered ecommerce site) with so much disparate media, particularly with Google as the gatekeeper. Newspapers, television, and radio does not have the impact it once had.
Amazon was the only name based off of a real noun. Whenever I buy from Amazon, I still wonder what the name has to do with the business (besides being the largest river and having alphabetical priority).
It is interesting to watch Google's influence on business names, particularly for local businesses.
Unfortunately, for most businesses today, the public mind is "censored" by Google search reslts. Not intentionally, but because Google knows better than you.
Name your businesss after popular search queries.
It is better to name your restaurant "townname foodtype", rather than anything unqiue.
springfield bar b q vs. tex's bbq pit
springfield chinese vs dragon phoenix
springfield plastic surgery vs
One of the biggest mobile phone retailers in the UK is called "Carphone Warehouse" - people don't think twice about the name. People treat the name as a brand rather than a literal interpretation of the words that make up the brand.
The company was originally named Cadabra, Inc., but the name was changed when it was discovered that people sometimes heard the name as "Cadaver." The name Amazon.com was chosen because the Amazon River is the largest river in the world, and so the name suggests large size, and also in part because it starts with 'A' and therefore would show up near the beginning of alphabetical lists.
Consider: Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon. None of these words had, when invented, any associations in the public mind. This allows those companies to grow and change their brands and their focus.
Imagine if Amazon had been called "Bookery". Or if Google were called "Searchio". Great names for what those companies started doing, completely misleading now -- especially in Amazon's case.