A method and apparatus for discovering services in a service registry. When an enterprise service bus receives a service request, the enterprise service bus determines whether the service name in the request exists in a service registry. If not, the enterprise service bus parses the service name into constituent words, obtains synonyms for each constituent word, and constructs new service names using the synonyms in the same word order as the constituent words in the service name. The enterprise service bus determines whether the constructed service names exist in the registry. If so, the enterprise service bus obtains an address of a service provider application associated with the constructed service name in the registry and sends a request for the service matching the constructed service name to the service provider application.