---
published: true
layout: post
title: Consistently Putting Your Brand in the Names of Your APIs
tags:
  - Naming
  - Brands
  - Governance
  - Titles
image: >-
  https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/yellow-journalism-blue-hhill-fair.jpeg
---
Naming your APIs is hard. Having governance and guidance available for teams when producing APIs helps a lot. It can be difficult for teams, especially the engineering teams producing APIs to choose the right name, have it make sense to others, but then also be something that is easily discovered and consistent with others. While profiling the Barclays APIs as part of the evaluation of APIs across the credit card industry, the inconsistent naming of APIs stands out, which when down in the weeds of API development won’t matter much, but begin to become much more noticeable downstream in the following ways.

- **Discovery** - The titles displayed in search results are inconsistent and when outside of the portal it will matter.
- **Documentation** - The documentation won’t be balanced out when some begin with company and some don’t.
- **Branding** - It is ideal to have your brand baked into the name of each of your APIs so everyone knows it is you.
- **Precision** - When referencing the APIs in search, AI, email, or other, the context of whose API it is travels with it.
- **Consistency** - There is balance and uniformity to the API catalog which will make it easier to read and learn about.

It is easy to have a Spectral or Vacuum rule that will check that each OpenAPI for an API has a title, but you will need to craft more custom scripting or automation to check for and append the company or brand name to the name of each API. API naming, how informative and useful it is, but also how consistent it is acts as a hallmark of not just the quality of your APIs, but of your API options. Having consistent names shows that producing APIs is a collaborative effort between engineering and product, and that there is someone thinking about the big picture as APIs move from developing into production, and beyond.


<center><a href="https://developer.barclays.com/catalogue"><img src="https://kinlane-productions2.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/barclays-api-catalog.png" style="width: 100%;"></a></center>