Naming the game: how we ended up with Inkisle
Ten English name candidates, five finalists, a store and domain check, and why Inkisle won. Including the weak spots we know about and the checks we have not done.
A game that will ship worldwide needs an English name early, because the name decides the domain, the icon, the store listing and what people type into a search box.
What we wanted from a name
- Short: one or two words, about twelve letters or fewer, so it does not get cut off under an icon.
- Easy to say for people who do not speak English natively.
- It hints at the game: islands, sea, conquest, spreading color.
- Searchable: nobody else owns the exact word in the stores.
- Room for a subtitle.
Ten candidates, five finalists
On the morning of 2026-10-29 we asked for an English name, checked candidates the same day and chose Inkisle. We wrote ten candidates and cut them to five: Inkisle, Tintisle, Isleway, Inkwake and Isletide. The other five fell out for plain reasons. Three of them collided with existing apps or games of the same or nearly the same name, one would drown in search results about other products, and one barely suggested a game.
The check
For each finalist we searched the US App Store (for Isletide, the Korean one too), Google Play and the .com registry on 2026-10-29. This only shows whether the same spelling is already in use. It misses similar sounds and spellings, and it is not a trademark check.
- Inkisle: no app or game with that name in either store at that time. The .com domain was registered in 2004 and is not available to us.
- Tintisle: the cleanest of the five, with no registration record for the .com (that does not prove it can be bought). In Korean, though, "tint" first suggests lip tint.
- Isleway: no store clash, but the name says nothing about coloring or capture.
- Inkwake: the .com was bought recently, and "wake" can read as waking up.
- Isletide: a similarly named game exists in the Korean App Store, so searches would mix.
Why Inkisle
The rule is inside the name. Ink spreads, and an island turns your color when you capture it. People who do not know the word "isle" still read "ink" and a shape. Seven letters fit under an icon. A subtitle fits in the iOS App Store's 30-character subtitle limit (this one is 28): "Tint the sea, take the isles". We found no bad meaning in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish or Portuguese, but those checks are our own reading and not native-speaker reviews.
The weak spots
- No .com. inkisle.com was registered in 2004 and is not available to us, so this site lives at inkisle.ipe.rest, under our studio's domain.
- Pronunciation. "Ink-ISLE" can be read as "inkiss-ul". The logo is written InkIsle with a capital I to split the word, and the store page should show how it sounds.
- Trademarks are unchecked. Before release we still have to search the US, EU, Korean and Japanese registries for software and game classes. Until then the name is decided but not cleared.
The runner-up was Tintisle. If the trademark search turns up a problem with Inkisle, that is the fallback.