Hi marySEO and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

It is not required to have a menu link to the home page of your site, but it can be a useful link if the home page has more granular site links than might fit conveniently in your menu.

it is still necessary to have the brand name in the website menu?

I'm trying to understand this question?

The "home" button is the main index.html page, well, it has been for me for 30 years now.

Usually the brand "logo" on every page links to index.html.

Your logo image title states the company brand name?

On every page I have in its titlebar its page description | Brand Name.

Am I missing something?

Are you using a content management system that does not allow this?

I have always had the company logo at top left and it has always been a link to the home page also.

Where I have also had breadcrumbs I usually started with | home / products / blue widget where the home was also a link to the homepage.

I have always had the company logo at top left and it has always been a link to the home page also.

Me too. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do anything different, as it's such standard practice that not to do it messes with user experience.

Don't forget that we are catering for people who wouldn't think to click a logo for the home page... I get lots of emails asking for directions when the link that are seeking is in the menu displayed in header, side column, footer and highlighted several times in the body of the page that they visited last.