For some the name of your new club will be pretty obvious. It can be as simple as adding the location of your studio to the name of the art e.g. Cambridge Mixed Martial Arts. However there are some things to consider when picking a name.

Stand out from the crowd – The most simple names are the location the art but what if you are in London? You are unlikely to be able to pick London Karate Club as your club name as that will be taken and there will be hundreds of London Karate clubs. You need a name that differentiates your club from the others. Below are some suggestions of how to make up your name.

• Location – Think about the location that you can include in your name. For more uncommon styles you may be able to use a region or county for your location e.g. North East Krav Maga Club or Lancashire Eskrima Studio . For more common styles you may need to be more specific by including the city, such as, Sheffield Karate or by including the area of a city such as East Birmingham Taekwondo. If there are a lot of clubs in the area, which may be the case in large cities, then you could even include the street name or venue name e.g. Drummond Street Tang Soo Do or Hillside Sports Centre Judo Club.
• Association Name – A way to change your name is to include the association name in your clubs name. There may be lots of karate clubs in Manchester but you might be the only one that is part of the British Karate Federation for example so call the club Manchester British Karate Federation Studio  or Manchester BKF Studio to make yours stand out.
• Your Name – You could include the lead instructors name in the club name. This could be useful if you are well known as a martial artist or have some recognisable achievement such as a world championship medal.  An example would be Steve Smith Karate Academy.
• Suffix – Adding a suffix to your club name can differentiate it from others. This can be as simple as words like; club, studio, dojo or academy. However you may want to go for words that are more emotive such as; Warriors, Dragons, Tigers etc. for example, Coventry Karate Dragons. Using words such as these could make your name more memorable.

Length – Don’t make the name too long. Something like “South East England Traditional Old Style Kyokushinkai Karate Seniors Club” may be very descriptive but it is too much for new prospective students to remember and you will struggle to use it. Try to keep it short and snappy.

Spelling – There may be variations in ways to spell parts of your clubs name. Some Asian words are translated from pictographic scripts phonetically into English so there can be variations. There may be one particular way of spelling that is common to your art or association and if so then use this. Otherwise try entering the different ways into Google and see how may results you get for each. This is a crude way of finding out the most popular way of spelling the word.

You may be tempted to use substitute letters like Karate Klub or Martial Artz to make your club stand out. I would advise against this. It could cause confusion, may annoy some and will not show up in searches on search engines.

Language-If you are doing a Korean, Japanese or other foreign style there may be words from the originating countries language that you could use in your name. Use caution when doing this because unless it is a well-known word it will not be easy for students to remember or spell.

Other considerations – Avoid using any trademarked names in your club name as this could land you in legal difficulties, so you don’t want to be the Coca Cola Karate Club or Disney Judo Studio for extreme examples.

Consider if your club name will work well as a URL for when you come to set up a website and check that a domain name is available that relates to your club. Your domain does not have to be the same as your club but it would help when people are searching for you online.