#1) Employees - 1,553
#2) Community - 526
#3) County - 323
#4) Schools - 279
#5) West - 214
#6) Teachers - 214
#7) City - 199
#8) Postal - 183
#9) First - 179
#10) North - 170

Connection to employees reflected in names

• 1-in-6 credit unions have the word ‘Employee’ in their name
• Over 600 credit unions have ‘School,’ ‘Teachers’ or ‘Educators’ in their name
• 183 have ‘Postal’ in their name
• 157 credit unions have ‘Municipal’ in their name
• 110 credit unions have ‘Health’ in their name
• 108 credit unions have ‘Fire’ in their name
• 73 credit unions have ‘Police’ in their name

‘Community’

• 1-in-16 credit unions use the word ‘Community’ in their name
• 48 credit union names start with ‘Community’
• 10 credit unions share the name ‘Community Credit Union’
• There are 4 ‘Community Choice’ CUs and four others named ‘Community First’

Who’s Number One?

• 161 credit unions use the word ‘One’ or number ‘1’
• 220 credit unions use the word ‘First’ or ‘1st’
• ‘First’ is the first word in 116 credit unions’ name; 25 others us ‘1st’ elsewhere in their names

Geography & Topography

• 393 credit unions use ‘County,’ 199 use ‘City,’141 use ‘State’
• About 100 credit unions use either ‘America,’ ‘American,’ ‘US’ or ‘USA’
• ‘West’ beats ‘East,’ 214 to 100
• ‘North’ beats ‘South,’ 170 to 131
• ‘Pacific’ beats ‘Atlantic,’ 40 to 16
• 141 credit unions use the word ‘Valley’
• 92 use ‘River’
• 68 use ‘Lake’
• 52 use ‘Coast’
• 40 use ‘Hill’
• 39 use ‘Rock’
• 37 use ‘Mountain’

‘Credit Union’ first

• 30 credit unions shun convention by putting ‘Credit Union’ in front of their name instead of at the end, such as the 7 credit unions who share ‘Credit Union One.’

Bottom line: You don’t have to change your credit union’s name just because it contains a commonly-used word. But if you’re going to change the name to something new, you should avoid these words. Using words that are this ubiquitous don’t distinguish you in any way, and they carry significant trademark risks.

Want the full list?
If you’d like the full list of words commonly used by credit unions in their names and the frequency with which they occur, shoot me an email.

Previous related stories from The Financial Brand:

• The ‘Community Credit Union’ fallacy
• The Top 50 Most Distinctive Credit Union Names
• What does ‘Federal’ do for FCUs?

Tags: names

Posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008. Filed under CU Naming. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.