Free brand name tool
Will people spell your name right?
A great name survives being heard once, typed on a phone, and repeated by autocorrect. Type a name below to score the ways it breaks - ambiguous sounds, silent letters, fat-finger slips, and the words your searchers will land on instead.
Risky
Most of your audience will end up somewhere else.
DTRI is the Domain Typing Risk Index: how likely “knight.com” is to be mistyped, from 0 (hopeless) to 100 (unmistakable).
Radio Test
38/100Say the name out loud - can a stranger spell it back on the first try?
Spelling Memory
57/100Silent letters and schwas are the bits people forget between hearing and typing.
Mobile Fat-Finger
71/100How close a thumb-slip gets to a real English word your searcher might land on.
Repeat-Letter Trap
100/100Doubles like “cc” and “vv” get typed as a single letter by almost everyone.
Siri Compatibility
38/100Voice input and autocorrect respell your name into whatever sounds closest.
Extension
100/100The ending a listener cannot guess: a “.com” is supplied for them, anything else has to be said and spelled.
Distinctiveness
61/100How crowded the spelling neighbourhood is: OLD20 distance to the 20 closest English words.
Where the points go
Points deducted from a perfect 100, by source.
- Sound-to-spelling
-
- -16.4
- Silent letters & schwas
-
- -17.2
- Repeated letters
-
- 0
- Keyboard slips
-
- -5.9
- Phonetic leak
-
- -24.8
- Extension
-
- 0
What to fix, in order
8 issues found, most serious first.
-
High
Autocorrect will find another word
knight.com
one letter away from the real word “night”, so autocorrect and voice input will find it first
Change a vowel or add a distinctive letter so no common word is one keystroke away.
-
High
“gh” can be spelled more than one way
knight.com
“gh” is silent in night, /f/ in laugh, and hard /g/ in ghost
Drop “gh” or replace it with the single sound you actually say.
-
High
“k” is not said out loud
knight.com
the “k” in a leading “kn” is silent
Drop the leading “k” (“nife”, not “knife”).
-
High
“gh” is not said out loud
knight.com
“gh” after “i” is always silent (night, weigh); after “ou” or “au” it is silent or /f/ (“thought”, “laugh”), which the sound-to-spelling scan reports instead
Drop “gh” and keep the vowel you pronounce.
-
Medium
“gh” sits on neighbouring keys
knight.com
The pair is 2.0 half-keys apart, so thumbs slide between them.
If the name is spoken often, keep a note of the correct spelling on the site.
-
Medium
A different spelling sounds close
knight.com
“night” sounds close to your name but is spelled differently — a spelling a listener could plausibly write down
Pick the spelling that a stranger would guess first, or own both spellings.
-
Medium
Crowded spelling neighbourhood
OLD20 of 1.8 - the closest common words are knight, night, knights.
Add a distinctive letter or syllable so the name is not a typo's distance from a common word.
-
Low
“ni” sits on neighbouring keys
knight.com
The pair is 2.83 half-keys apart, so thumbs slide between them.
If the name is spoken often, keep a note of the correct spelling on the site.
Raw signals behind this score
Sound-alike codes
- Simplified Metaphone
- NT
- Soundex
- K523
- Refined Soundex
- K80406
- Distinct codes
- 3
Alternative spellings
- night
- knit
Closest common words
OLD20: 1.8
- knight (0)
- night (1)
- knights (1)
- right (2)
- light (2)
The radio test
Say the name to a stranger on a bad line. If they cannot spell it back, you will be spelling it out on every call - and paying for the typo traffic.
The phone test
Most first searches happen on a soft keyboard. We check whether a one-key slip - or autocorrect's favourite word - sends that search to someone else.
How the score works
DTRI is a weighted blend of sound-to-spelling ambiguity, silent letters, keyboard distance, repeated letters, and phonetic leaks. It runs entirely on this page.
Read the methodologyBrand name spelling questions
What is the radio test for a business name?
The radio test asks whether someone who only hears your name once can spell it back correctly. A name passes when it has one obvious spelling; it fails when it relies on sounds like “ph”, “ough”, or a schwa vowel that listeners have to guess at.
How do you check if a domain name is mobile-friendly?
Mobile-friendly names keep every letter far from a neighbouring key on the soft keyboard, and they do not turn into a common word after a single thumb-slip. NameKnow scores each adjacent letter pair and checks every one-key substitution against the most frequent English words.
What is autocorrect leakage?
Autocorrect leakage is when a plausible respelling of your name is already a real, common word. A searcher who mistypes your name gets silently corrected to that word and never reaches your site - for example “kat” being corrected to “cat”.
Does the domain extension matter for the radio test?
Yes, and it is the part of the address nobody can guess. People assume “.com”, and browsers autocomplete it, so a “.com” costs nothing to say. Every other ending has to be spoken out loud (“dot io”) and spelled when the listener hesitates, and anyone who leaves it off reaches whoever owns the “.com” instead.
Naming guides
The ideas behind the score, in more detail.
Brand name spelling test
A brand name spelling test tells you whether a stranger who hears your name once can type it correctly. Learn the six failure modes, then score your own name free.
The radio test for business names
The radio test asks whether a listener can find your business after hearing its name once. Learn which letter patterns and endings fail it, then score your own name free.
Mobile-friendly domain checker
Most first searches happen on a phone keyboard. Check whether your domain survives a thumb slip, whether that slip lands on a common word, and whether the ending is one the keyboard supplies.
Autocorrect leakage risk
Autocorrect leakage is traffic that silently becomes somebody else's because your name is one letter from a common word. Learn how to measure and fix it.