Should You Name Your Business After Yourself? The Trade Mark Risks Explained

If your business is called “[Your Name] Consulting” or “[Your Name] Design Studio,” there’s a decent chance you’ve made your life harder than it needed to be. Not because your name isn’t great — it’s your name, of course it’s great. But from an IP and business perspective, naming your brand after yourself can quietly cause more problems than it solves.

Here’s why that is, when it’s actually fine, and what to think about if you’re still at the naming stage.

You and the business are not the same asset

When you name your business after yourself, you’re doing something that feels completely natural — especially in the early days when you’re a sole trader and, for all practical purposes, you are the business. But legally and commercially, you’re bundling two different things together: you, the person, and the business, which is the asset.

That bundling is where the problems start.

Trade mark registration gets murkier

Personal names can be harder to register as trade marks, particularly if your name is common, or if someone else in your industry shares it. IP Australia can knock back an application if a name is considered “not inherently adaptable to distinguish” your goods or services — and an ordinary surname or full name can run into exactly that issue. Think of a business called something like “Green’s Baking” — a common surname like Green consistently runs into trouble getting that kind of mark registered.

You can’t cleanly separate yourself from the business later

If you ever want to sell, bring in a partner, or step back, a business called “Smith & Co” or “Sarah Smith Consulting” carries your identity into every future version of that business. Buyers know this. It raises an obvious question: what are they actually buying if the business is inseparable from you?

Succession and estate planning get complicated

If something happens to you — you retire, you get sick, you want to hand the business to your kids or a business partner — a brand built on your name doesn’t transfer the same way. The next owner is stuck running “your” business under your name, forever explaining that no, Sarah doesn’t actually work here anymore.

It limits how the business can grow

A team, a second location, a broader service offering — all of it sits awkwardly under a personal name. It’s fine at solo-operator scale. It gets strange the moment the business is bigger than you.

None of this means naming a business after yourself is always wrong. Plenty of professional service firms — including plenty of law firms — do exactly this, deliberately. But it should be a decision, not a default.

A practical example

Imagine a graphic designer who starts out freelancing and names the business after herself, because that’s just what you do when you’re one person with a laptop. Fast forward five years: she’s got two employees, a genuinely valuable client list, and someone interested in buying the business.

The buyer’s first questions aren’t about the client list or the revenue — they’re about the brand. Can it be trade marked? Can it be used without her personally showing up to every client meeting forever? Will clients follow the brand, or will they follow her?

Those questions can absolutely be answered — with the right structuring, a personal-name brand can still be sold, licensed, or transitioned. But it takes more legal and commercial work to get there than if the brand had been separable from day one. What could have been a clean sale becomes a longer, more expensive negotiation about exactly what’s being bought — and the designer may find herself unable to use her own name in any future business venture, because that name and identity now belongs to the business she sold, not to her.

The real question to ask yourself

The lesson isn’t “never use your name.” It’s this: your business name is a decision about the future of the business, not just a description of who’s running it today.

If you’re building something you eventually want to sell, scale, hand over, or step back from, ask yourself early: can this brand exist without me being the one delivering it? If the honest answer is no, that’s worth knowing now — either so you deliberately keep the business small and personal (a completely valid choice), or so you plan for a rebrand before you’re deep into building brand equity you’ll later need to unwind.

What to do about it

●        If you’re naming a new business:

Consider a name that describes what you do or evokes a feeling, rather than defaulting to your own name. A made-up or suggestive word is usually easier to register as a trade mark than a purely descriptive one — and it keeps your options open.

●        If you’ve already named it after yourself and it’s working:

That’s fine — just be deliberate about it. Document your brand assets properly, and if you ever plan to sell or bring in partners, get advice early about how ownership and goodwill are structured.

●        If you’re planning a sale, succession, or bringing in a partner down the track:

Start that conversation years, not months, before you need it. Rebrands and ownership restructuring take time to do properly.

●        Either way:

Make sure whatever name you land on is actually registered to the business, not sitting informally with you as an individual. That distinction matters more than people expect.

Not sure where you stand?

If you’re not sure whether your current business name and brand are set up to grow with you — or whether they’re quietly tied to you in a way that will cause problems later — the free IP Risk and Ownership Audit on my website is built to help you spot exactly that. It only takes a few minutes.

And if you’re already thinking about a sale, succession, or bringing someone else into the business, book a Strategy Call — the earlier you start that conversation, the more options you’ll have.

Disclaimer: This blog post is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. You should obtain advice tailored to your circumstances before acting on any information discussed here.