I've no convention, usually project name is a contraction of customername and a contracted description of the project like "matforming" or "bottlemeasurer". Sometimes if we work for multiple departments or project groups at that customer we extra qualify it with department.
That leads a bit to the same problem (first project often gets the "client" name without department qualification), but IMHO that can't be avoided. Fiddling out the company structure of a new client while only doing a prospect is a bridge to far.
Sometimes the descriptions are also a problem, when you start developing variants on an existing product, or second generations. But that is also quite difficult to predict.
