The name initially agreed upon by the founders was “MB’s Warehouse” ("MB" standing for the founders, Bernard “Bernie” Marcus and Arthur Blank), but it received lukewarm reception from investors. Bernie retained the services of Canadian retail identity consultant Don Watt in 1978 to develop an effective name and look for the stores, from whose sketches these images are sourced. The “do-it home center” concept may have been revisited by Watt for his Do It Center identity in 1980.
Watt went all-in on pitching “Bad Bernie”, also a reference to Marcus, a Crazy Eddie-type figure who was “locked up” for “selling at such low prices!”. Bernie, though apprehensive at first, was swayed by both Watt’s confidence in the concept and his wife Billi’s liking to it. It rode out for slightly longer internally, even gaining an apostrophe it initially lacked, before uncertainty from the group’s banker changed Marcus’ mind.
It was around this point that Watt suggested printing the signs on bright orange canvas to curb the cost of typical lighted signage, and concepts thereafter used ATF's Stencil as its primary font. The group briefly returned to the “MB’s” name, and a subsequent investors’ meeting led to a large brainstorming session. Early investor Marjorie Buckley made a list of twelve potential names while traveling home to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “The Home Depot”, her second choice behind “The Homeplace”, came from spotting a restaurant on the road called The Station Brake that operated in a decommissioned railroad car. This won over both investors and management, and the first printed instance of the Home Depot name occurred on February 22, 1979.