I love making jewelry. I get a great deal of satisfaction from conceiving a design and then bringing it into the real world. What I don’t particularly enjoy is naming the thing.

Bernd and I sell our jewelry on Etsy (jewelrybysyzygy.etsy.com) and part of listing items for sale on the site is titling them and describing them.

There is a section for tag words (you get a maximum of 13) to help buyers find your items, but your title is equally important. Maybe even more so. At least on Etsy’s site.

Etsy says that all the information you put into your listing helps buyers to find the item. So they say to include important keywords in your written description along with filling in all the fields they provide (size, color, components, intended use, who it’s for, etc.).

Most of that is easy … except for the title.

Some creators make their titles so long that they are ridiculous. It’s like they are trying to appeal to everyone and present every aspect of the item. But you only see the full title when you click on a thumbnail. So even though all that might help in a search, what a buyer initially sees is just a few of the very first words. So those first few words are very important.

That’s what gives me the most grief.

Do I go with something that pleases me aesthetically or do I get strictly descriptive. Then too, what if I’m planning to make others that are very similar but maybe in different metals? Am I then stuck with naming the group consistently?

This is all on my mind because I just came up with a new pendant idea. I made one and really like it and would like to make it in different metals with different textures.

The first thing that came to mind was “Layered Circles Pendant.” It’s made from hammered copper washers and copper jump rings with a bail that I made from copper wire.

I like it so much I plan to make more and then decided that maybe the group would need a name to tie them together. And since the arrangement of the washers reminded me of our logo, I thought I might call the group “SyZyGy Pendants.” So the title became “Layered Circles Pendant. Copper SyZyGy Pendant.” We’ve had our company, SyZyGy, since the year 2000 and I still like the name and the logo.

This is the logo I created when we first started our company. Syzygy is when three celestial bodies are aligned. In this case it is the earth, moon and sun.

But I just wasn’t cool with “Layered.” So then it became “Many Circles Pendant. Copper SyZyGy Pendant.” But I’m still just not sure about that either. You get something like 40 characters and spaces for the title below the thumbnail. So by keeping my title short, almost all of it will appear. But is that the best way to go? And is “many” any better than “layered” just because it sounds nicer to me in my mind.

The pendant in my hand as a size reference.

There are all sorts of businesses out there that make marketing into a science. Developers employ them to name their products. They do studies and try different things with different groups of people. They charge a lot of money for their services and I’m sitting here trying to decide between “layered” and “many.” And what if the rest of it is not really very good either?

As I wrote at the beginning, titling an item gives me a great deal of trouble.