analysis Corporate Naming Inspiration from Particle Physics

Since I started writing for NamePros Blog in 2019, I have been waiting for the right day to share an article about the Standard Model of particle physics. That day has arrived.

Recently SquadHelp rebranded to Atom, as discussed in the NamePros thread Squadhelp is now Atom. In explaining the rebranding, the company wrote:

Atoms are the building blocks of everything, and Atom.com will soon provide the building blocks of every great startup.

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How often are terms from particle physics used in corporate brands? Which terms are most popular? What is the meaning behind some of the terms, and do brands draw on that? Let’s take a look.

Basic Particle Physics Terms

I am going to divide the particle physics terms into several divisions. Let’s start with some terms that have been around for decades.

• Molecules are formed from atoms. For example carbon dioxide is a combination of one carbon and two oxygen atoms, while methane is composed of one carbon with four hydrogen atoms.
• The atom has a nucleus and is surrounded by an electron cloud.
• The nucleus is composed of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. The electron is negatively charged, and in the neutral atom there are equal numbers of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. An ion is the case when the charges do not balance.

The term atom comes from the ancient Greek atomos, which means ‘indivisible.’

The chemical properties of each element depend on the number of protons in the atom. The Periodic Table of the Elements is based on this.

For each of the bolded terms, in the order presented above, I looked up the following information:

• Number of times that term appeared in active business and organization names in the OpenCorporates database. Note that the number does include ‘formerly known as’ and ‘also known as’ names.
• Next, I used DotDB to see how many times that exact term was registered in an extension, and the total number of times the term appeared in longer domain names. Note that many of these will not be directly related to the particle physics meaning of the term, but simply longer words that include that letter combination.
• I manually checked the status of the domain for the .com, .io, .ai, .co and .xyz extensions. In the table below NIU means not in use (I considered a few that gave me a security warning under NIU as well). If there was a developed website, either directly or via redirection, I tried to capture the main product or service in one or a few words. If a name was parked but also clearly for sale, I listed it as ‘for sale.’

Here are the results:


All of these terms are highly registered, with molecule in 171 extensions the fewest, and atom in 412 the most. You might think the over 11 million total TLDs for ‘ion’ is an error. It is not, but remember that any domain name made up of words such as station, vacation, rotation, etc. will be included, even though they have nothing directly to do with an ion.

The terms are all used in quite a few business and organization names, with molecule the only one less than 1000. The most used are ion and element. Of course, element has an important meaning distinct from the scientific term.

The .com was developed in all terms in this category except neutron and ion, while about half of the terms were developed for .io, and almost half for.ai and .co. Most of these terms in .xyz were listed for sale, although one was developed and one had an opening screen.

The Standard Model Quarks and Leptons

The Standard Model of Particle Physics formulates the particles and interactions, or forces, in terms of fundamental building blocks. It was developed by a number of scientists, with much of the key work done between 1954 and 1975. There is some debate whether the term Standard Model was first used in 1973 or 1975, and who first proposed it.

This diagram of the Standard Model, courtesy of Cush, and placed in the public domain, will be helpful as the additional particle physics terms are described below.


The proton and neutron had previously been considered ‘fundamental’ but are in fact composed of quarks. There are six types of quarks, with the names up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom (some earlier literature used the alternate terms truth and beauty for the top and bottom).

The quarks have electrical charges of either +2/3 or -1/3 of the fundamental electron charge. The fundamental electric charge is simply the charge on a proton. A proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark, so it’s total electrical charge is 2*(2/3)+1*(-1/3)=+1 as required. A neutron is one up quark (+2/3 charge) and two down quarks (each -1/3) so is electrically neutral.

The other types of quarks have higher mass, that is specified in the top line but in units of MeV divided by the speed of light, c, squared, where MeV is an energy unit of mega electronvolts, while GeV is giga electronvolts and a factor of 1000 more. None of that detail really matters for understanding the terms, just know that the the generations II and III are more massive, and more elusive to detect.

By the way, in case you were wondering where the term quark comes from, physicist Murray Gell-Mann proposed the term first as a similar made-up word, and then he discovered this form after reading the line “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Since 3 plays a big role in quark physics, he liked the term and adopted that spelling.

In addition to quarks, there are much less massive particles called leptons. The electron is in fact a lepton, as are the muon and tau that also carry a charge of -1.

But there are also three leptons that are electrically neutral, the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino. The term neutrino means ‘little neutral one.’ Neutrinos are produced in the nuclear cores of the sun, and other stars. They are hard to detect, because they don’t interact, and pass through objects, most of the time. It is estimated that if you took 10 seconds to read this paragraph about 1000 trillion, that is one quadrillion, neutrinos passed through your body!

For brand use purposes, I just extracted the key terms, not considering for example the muon neutrino as a separate particle, even though it is in terms of physics.

There are a few other terms that we should include, though. A hadron is composed of two or more quarks – so protons and neutrons are hadrons, but so are many other observed particles.

The baryon is a subatomic particle with a mass equal to or greater than the proton.

We have not mentioned this yet, but actually particles have antimatter twins. The combination of a quark and an antimatter quark can form a particle called a meson.

You may have noticed that the chart has spin for each particle. Particles with odd half-integer spin, such as 1/2 or 3/2, are called fermions. The statistics of how they interact depend on spin, Fermi-Dirac statistics for those who wish to look up more.

One of the better known mesons is the pion.

Now you could blindly use these terms in branding, but knowing the physics meaning can help. For example, quarks are fundamental building blocks, leptons are lighter, neutrinos are elusive, and so on. A bit more on this at the end of the article.

The table below gives the domain and branding data for the particles introduced in this section in order of mention.


We see that generally these terms are used in fewer business names than the basic terms in the first table, and most are less frequently registered, compared to the previous section basic terms.

The tau is an exception, but that is due to the fact that as well as a particle term it is also a letter in the Greek alphabet.

The large number of longer terms for pion would include words like scorpion, champion, etc. that have nothing to do with the particle physics term.

I was surprised why meson is so frequently used in business names compared to some of the other terms, and I don’t have an explanation.

Interaction Terms

The Standard Model but also includes the forces or interactions. The right hand side of the standard model image above shows these terms and the associated particles.

Within the nucleus, the strong nuclear force is key to binding of quarks. The associated ‘particle’ term is appropriately called the gluon.

Light, and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as infrared, x-ray or gamma rays, demonstrates both wave and particle characteristics. The packets of electromagnetic radiation are photons. Electromagnetic radiation is quantized into these units.

The electroweak interaction is much less known to the general public. It is associated with two types of bosons as shown in the chart.

The gravitational force that we encounter in daily life has a postulated graviton particle, although conclusive detection is elusive.

Finally, mass can be explained through the presence of the Higgs interaction and Higgs boson. Its presence was confirmed experimentally at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland in 2012. Peter Higgs, who passed away this year, was one of those who postulated the particle in1964.

So how did these terms fare in business use?


Not surprisingly, the photon is the most used in business names and also by far the most registered. There is a logical use of this term in anything involved with lasers, lighting, infrared heating, ultraviolet cleansing, photography, sun protection, solar energy, etc.

I was surprised by how often higgs appears in names, but it is probably due to its use as a surname, although I did not investigate in detail.

A Few More Particles

There are many other terms used in particle physics, some hypothesized but not yet detected. I could not resist including a few that I found interesting.

The axion is a nice branding term, short and strong and passes audio test. It is a postulated particle that would solve a few unexplained things in physics and astronomy, as this article explains.

Relativity seems to set the speed of light as a maximum possible speed, but some have hypothesized the presence of particles, called tachyons that could only travel faster than the speed of light. I clearly remember the day in class, now five decades ago, when my professor introduced the idea of tachyons. I am not alone with a fascination for the term, as it is fairly extensively registered, and both the .com and .io are developed sites. Confusion with tacky might be a branding concern, however.

Some substances demonstrate quantized collective motion that is almost like a particle, and that was termed a phonon, analogous to photon, even though phonons are not standard model particles in any sense. Nonetheless, I have always found the term, and idea, fascinating, remembering also when I first heard that term. Not many companies use the name, and some who do draw on an audio connection, going back to phonograph, rather than the quantized motion meaning of the term. Wikipedia has a clear explanation. Although in no sense literally related, the term may find some branding application in quantum computing.

I love the whimsical sound of the term quark, and based on that particles called squarks have been hypothesized. I am told they are the supersymmetric counterpart of a quark, with 0 spin, but I don’t really understand supersymmetry. But a cool term, and a few businesses agree.

Another topic I don’t really understand is supergravity. As part of that thee are a number of postulated particles including one called the gravitino. Only 4 businesses use this term in their name, and I just found the exact term in one developed site. In case you are taking a long bet, the term was available for registration at time of writing in several of the extensions I checked.


Final Thoughts

No one needs to hold names based on particle physics terms. It is just one of a myriad of possible inspirations for brandable domain names. As with any niche, many registered names will never find an end user match.

While most members of the public have never personally visited a high energy particle accelerator facility, or studied theoretical physics, there is a fascination with terms such a quark or atom or photon that suggest universality, coherence, power and simplicity.

Names that also pass the traditional indicators of a high-quality name are best, such as short, easily spelled, audio test, memorable with a pleasant sound.

Use the meaning of a term to find branding opportunities that are a good fit. Here are some ideas:

• Photon is best suited to applications involving light or electromagnetism in some way, although the idea of small packets that are everywhere could also be meaningful.
• Quarks are the fundamental building blocks of almost all the matter in our universe, it seems, so drawing on that for something that provide a universal foundation, or key services.
• Lepton as a word feels light and inviting, and hints at ‘leapt on.’ Leptons are much less massive than quarks, and they are equally fundamental. So for potential lepton applications perhaps think of a service that is easy to implement, yet makes a difference, without a big demand.
• Neutrino is a longer word, but the ideas they bring, passing unnoticed through most objects, and being everywhere, and signals from the energy cores of stars, suggest multiple brand possibilities.
• To most the term hadron is probably associated with the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. With so many fundamental discoveries and confirmations, the LHC is in the news a lot. This makes hadron a good branding choice for new and powerful technologies.
• The term ion is of course short and memorable, and a great fit for anything electrified. Ion propulsion is an emerging technology, one of many that depend on ionized matter, so literal uses also abound.
• Probably gravitons are everywhere, and related to something each of us senses every moment of every day, and yet are surprisingly hard to prove. That must lead to branding possibilities!
• Any of the interaction terms might find application in networking, collaboration and teamwork.

Here are a few sites with summaries of key particle physics terms:

• Syracuse University Particle Physics Vocabulary
• The Open University Particle Physics Glossary

The Wikipedia entry on the Standard Model gets very deep part way through, but the early sections, and the table near the end, provide an introduction to key ideas.

If really keen to get into this topic, possibly the most widely read textbook is the second edition of Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths.

I have by no means covered all of the interesting particle physics terms in this article. Here is a particle not mentioned that has good branding potential: kaon.

In case you missed it, the NamePros Blog has had articles on:

• Universe of Possibilities – Astronomical Terms as Brands Part 1
• Part 2 – Stars, Constellations and Space
• Electrical terms and brands were covered in Electrify Your Domain Portfolio.

If you hold, or have sold, names based on particle physics ideas, please share in the comment section below, if you wish.

Interestingly, when I checked the names for the table, I found a couple of the for sale names using the new NamePros landers. It is nice to see high value names trying out the NamePros landers.

Thanks for reading to the end. There will be less physics in next week’s NamePros article. Probably.


Thanks to OpenCorporates and DotDB for the data presented. They both offer incredible tools related to corporate naming. Thanks to Cush for the nice Standard Model diagram.

As disclosure, I do hold a single name listed for sale included in one of the tables of this article. I, like many I am sure, have a few of the terms as part of two-word .com domain names and/or new extension names. I like the branding potential of some of the terms. I registered a couple more just before publishing this article!