When presenting a shortlist to a client, what is the optimal number of variations for a business name that should be given for selection?

Let’s start with a basic premise: too many options, especially if poorly presented, don't facilitate decision-making. They complicate it (even at a chemical level in the brain) and tend to push the person making the decision to rely on their own biases, opting for the path of least resistance, influenced by past experiences, clichés, and so on.

For this reason, I believe that a good number of proposals for a brand naming project should be between 3 and 5, maximum.

Keep in mind that to arrive at 5 strong ideas, we probably will have generated, evaluated, and discarded several hundred proposals.

If we've done good initial work with the client by identifying the right guidelines to follow, and we know the brand’s values, personality, unique characteristics, and target audience, it’s unlikely that the names we present will be off the mark.