The Web site of branding consultants Burson Marsteller quotes Cervantes' legendary Don Quixote: "A good name is better than riches."

It must be so. Online businesses are still trading their riches for good domain names. And the attitude still seems to be the more generic, the better.

Is the watershed of the domain speculation industry the $3-million-plus (US) purchase by search engine company AltaVista of www.altavista.com from a similarly named software developer? No. It's the $7.5-million sale of business.com a year ago to eCompanies LLP, which plans to turn the domain into the portal for small business. Seller Marc Ostrofsky had bought the domain name for a then-staggering $150,000 in 1996.

"Right now, a good domain name goes for $1 million a letter," says Naseem Javed, founder of Brampton, Ont.-based ABC Namebank International.

Javed was a pioneer when he focused on the corporate naming business 22 years ago. While advertising agencies and marketing companies often came up with company names as part of a larger campaign, ABC Namebank was one of the first companies to specialize exclusively in the name game.

Domain and dot-com company names can be valuable assets. But most of the time, they're not, Javed says.

"Ninety per cent of corporate names are in the process of chipping away at company assets," he says.

Why the nominal crisis?

"There's a general misconception that we are all out of names, that we're only left with zodiac signs, major rivers and reptiles," he says.

"There is no shortage of names."

The problem is that people naming companies have no formal training and precious little experience on the naming front. They're left to focus groups, lists of suggestions from groups of employees, and blind guessing. And that's led to billions of dollars' worth of brand manouevring around those names.

"Amateurs have no place in naming today. Those days are over," he says.

Generics — like business.com — are an attractive alternative to a branding campaign that makes $1 million a letter look like petty cash, says Javed.

But how effective will such names be when the majority of users aren't new to the Web and have more sophisticated keyword capabilities and experience using them?

"Fast-forward five years," says Adam Sherwin, executive director of New York-based Happy Media Inc.

"Take away the dot-com, and you have no brand. Even Business Etc. would have a better chance.

"A memorable, powerful, intuitive, creative brand name will always have the advantage over a generic equivalent."

More to the point, though, is that even seasoned executives can believe a great domain name is a substitute for a business plan or a revenue model. Sometimes, that seven-figure domain name comprises most of a company's assets, and is often "the only thing like an idea they've got."

"A Web site does not a company make, and it certainly does not a viable business make."

Generics can be valuable, says Sherwin, especially to the online presences of brick-and-mortar retailers (dot-bams).

"For example, WalMart could attract a significant number of clients to its online pharmacy store by setting up a domain name such as flu.com," he says.

(Flu.com is one of almost 100 generic domain names Procter & Gamble has amassed over the years, and is selling through GreatDomains.com. Among the others: beautiful.com, cleans.com, sensual.com, romantic.com, scent.com and thirst.com.)

But a Web-based company has different needs for its domain name, says Sherwin. Take, for example, Happy Media itself.

Founded in 1996, Happy Media operated out of Sherwin's living room until earlier this year. Customers don't stumble across Happy Media in the street, or pop by the office — they contact the company over the Web.

But the company has developed a network of services, each of which requires its own touch point to avoid alienating customers.

Happy Media handles small business and individual branding and naming clients through its DomainSmith brand. Its GreatServers brand is aimed at the high-end hosting market. If a client comes to Happy Media for the former and gets the latter, she's not going to want to do business.

"These two brands represent closely related parts of the same process, but by branding them individually, the company can access customers in an efficient, targeted fashion," he says.

The corporate and online identities are "two sides of the coin," Javed says, and a clever domain name that can't be fully leveraged is worthless. "Without the trademark, you have nothing," says Javed. What's left of cocacola.com or sony.com without the brand power of the corporate identity?

"All you're left with is metal or sugar and junk of no value," he says.

And, of course, Javed has words for boo.com, the dot-com retailer that burned through $130 million (US) in six months before closing its doors: "Take a look at your stupid name. What were you trying to achieve?"

He slots boo.com among the Yahoo!-inspired trend of "moronic names."