A system and associated method for searching a service registry system with a service name. The service registry system receives a request to search a service description with the service name. The service registry system first searches a registry for a service identifier that matches the service name in the request, and if there is no matching service identifier, the service registry system composes at least one candidate service name from synonyms of respective component words that are comprised by the service name. The service registry system performs another search in the registry with said composed candidate service name for all composed candidate service names and service descriptions associated with any match are returned.