What's in a name?

Every company hits an inevitable point where it decides to think about picking a new name.  So many freakin' considerations: is the URL available?  Is the name spellable? Does it accurately describe the product/company?  Does it evoke positive images?  Does it have good "mouthfeel"?  Does it make our company serious/goofy/intellectual/consumer-friendly/etc.?  Is it already being used?  Does it look too much like our competitors?  Will it last?  Is there a racial slur in the middle of it?  Can it be used as a verb?

All in all though, I find a lot of these discussions meander through meaningless sessions of creativity.  Look at some of the biggest internet companies.  I can only imagine the conversations with these names:

• Flickr - it's too trendy, hard to spell, and sounds goofy
• Google - is an incorrect spelling of an existing term, suggests that the company is huge and powerful, and look at those damn Crayola colors
• Yahoo - another goofy name and what does that say about our directory?  And what about the people who have actually read Gulliver's Travels and know that a "yahoo" isn't a good thing to be?
• eBay - there are too many companies "eEverything" and we'll get lost in the noise.  And what the hell does a "Bay" have to do with auctions?
• Amazon - shouldn't we get "books.com"?

Brands that succeed get all sorts of retrofitted praise.  "I love the playful colors of the Google logo that comfort users even though they're using a complex technology."  The reality is that young companies should spend more time thinking about their messaging and positioning and less time thinking about their brand.  The time spent in considering how to talk to the press, how to have a conversation about your product in the blogosphere, and how to frame user problems is much more valuable than establishing an over-thought brand with no market traction. 

Sure, if you're P&G, brand-management suddenly becomes important.  But let's face it: what the Hell does a name matter for an unknown startup?  I remember back when Kosmix was being renamed from its old company name: Cosmix.  For all the time we spent looking at alternatives, we just changed the "c" to a "k."  The time was well spent, however, in that thinking about the name forced us to consider how to position Kosmix against our competitors.

Has anyone else been involved in product or company naming discussions?  I'm curious to know if there's a good process or good experiences out there.