Where did our name come from?

Oct 14, 2020

It should be easy to choose a name for a consultancy service, but our experience has shown it is anything but!

The obvious thought is to use some variation of our names – but there are a number of issues with that. Our names don’t necessarily go together well (although “Sheppard” and “Walsh” are far from the worst pairing). It’s also potentially off-putting to others who may come and work with us in the future as company is linked to specific individuals. (Yes, there are many examples of companies named after the founders, although very often the individuals concerned are no longer connected with the company). We have our own trading companies, and considered using some concatenation of the names of these – but there was not an obvious combination ….

We tried to think of a location-based name, but that did not work – after all we will provide services wherever required (and in the near term, we anticipate working remotely). We also thought about a service related name – but our intent is to provide services that our clients need, rather than having a preset portfolio of services, and we did not be tied in to doing just what would be implied by a name.

Our third thought was to base it on a relevant object (for example we thought about names including the word ‘compass’ with its connotations of ‘giving direction’). Unfortunately too many others have already had a similar idea and there is a wealth of companies / consultancies with names based on this premise.

Our final thought was to consider what aspect of our consultancy we and many of our associates have in common; one of those aspects relates to shared values, but it was difficult to identify a value based name that gave the desired breadth. One other prosaic shared factor we identified was our familiarity with the distinctive Lloyd’s Register HQ building on Fenchurch Street in London, with both us and many of our associates having worked there. The building was designed by Thomas Collcutt who was the architect behind a number of key buildings around the UK (including the Savoy Hotel and the Wigmore Hall in London).

That's how we settled on “Collcutt Associates”.

Note - the LR building also featured in a Monty Python short film (a short "B" movie at the start of the “The Meaning of Life”) – and this subversiveness appealed to both of us!