Naming a blog, I imagine, is a bit like naming a baby. A blog can certainly be as demanding as a baby – it needs constant attention, it needs to be fed plenty of times with fulfilling, imaginative and engaging content and it needs to be cleaned up regularly. It can be so incredibly rewarding and is often incredibly exhausting.
So, the birth of this crazy overseas adventure naturally led to the birth of this blog and with it the need for a name.
And just like naming a new baby, you want a blog name that is going to stand out but not be ridiculous. A name that has character, strength and appeal and will fit the personality of your new addition – and perhaps you also want it to have significant meaning.
You would think it would be easy, it is yours after all.
But naming our blog was a challenge bordering on a nightmare and took us months of searching before arriving at a moniker we agreed on.
Our – okay, my – criteria was pretty simple:
- It had to be representative of both of us.
- It had to be flexible and able to grow with us as our lives evolve and change.
- It could not be geographically specific as we are likely to move.
- It had to have a bit of personality.
- Ideally it needed to be a .com domain.
- Preferably, it needed to be short – one or two words (you can’t win ’em all).
Sounds pretty simple right? Far from it. The pressure of naming this baby had me awake in the wee hours of the morning running over word combinations and coming up with all manner of weird, wonderful and outlandish ideas. The Joker was getting frustrated and even a bit angry that I was going on and on about it and he was over it and prepared to abandon the whole blogging experience. Family and friends were eventually invited, perhaps even coerced, into the blog naming process and pressed for suggestions.
Don’t laugh but we were originally going to be called Pineapple and Spring Onion. I know, I know, it sounds weird but there is a back story. On our last adventures through Asia a lovely Vietnamese girl at a delightful restaurant in Hoi An, put on a Kath and Kim accent and dubbed us Pineapple – because he is prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside and Spring Onion – because she makes all the boys cry. Anyway, one of the Joker’s many nicknames is Fruitman and there seemed to be many reasons why this was a good name. But at the end of the day it had a few too many negatives:
- It was perhaps too quirky
- It was quite long (although so is Journo and the Joker)
- It needed a bit of explaining
- It was not really descriptive of who we are
- When we tested it with friends and family, most thought it was a bit weird – and they know us!
So it was back to the drawing board – again and again. We wrote lists of possibilities. They included everything from Life is a Highway to Feeling the Freedom, Freedom Street and Walk the Line (a play on our names, Walker and Linehan). The domain names of most of our best ideas were taken. And every time I typed it into the domain name registry and it came back with taken I got more and more frustrated. So we started thinking more laterally and came up with things like Stirred Not Fried (might work for a health food blog), Koala Kapers (perhaps a kids game), and Wallaby Wanderers (a bit too colloquial).
After dinner with some old school friends in Perth I very nearly settled on Drunk Buffaloes. It sounded great over a few glasses of wine but then reality set in and I realised it was probably not going to work. But it was available, which was a huge plus.
So, thinking along those lines I decided to try some very random ideas – like Half Past Now. It was taken! At this stage I wanted to cry.
In a last-ditch effort to come up with something we were brain-storming at my sister’s place and between my sister, the Joker and myself, we managed to come up with Journo and the Joker. And it passed the friends and family test, which is always important. People seemed to like it and connect to it. So finally, it was decided. But what a lot of stress.
Names are so important. Certainly some cultures hold names with great reverence and others have big naming ceremonies and your blog name needs to be treated with the same importance.
Here’s a few tips to think about when naming a blog:
1. Where possible choose something short and sweet
2. Alliteration can often work well. That said, it is mere coincidence that we have the J’s in our name.
3. Write it out with the words all joined together like they would be in a domain name and see how they read. One of the suggestions someone came up with for our blog name was S and S Adventures, which a) sounds like a tourism company and b) when typed into the browser reads as sandsadventures (sands adventures).
4. Choose something that doesn’t make people ask too many questions.
5. Think about spelling – I’m dubious of things that aren’t spelt correctly because if someone has just heard your name and not seen it they will not think to put in strange or incorrect spellings.
6. Your blog is your personal journey so make sure it is something you like and can relate to.
We’re not experts by any means and there is plenty of info on the web. I found this post from Udemy too late for the naming of our blog but there are some good points there for those trying to come up with the perfect blog name. They seem to think that the domain extension does not matter but I still prefer the .com. It is the go-to that people type in first. They like short and sweet names, which is all well and good if they are available. Unfortunately the ones we liked were not.
Have you got a blog? How did you name your blog? Was the process as tedious as ours? Share your stories here and any other tips you have for choosing a blog name.
Joey says
Great post! I was reading through your post and found myself with the exact same problem when I started my blog. I remember getting a whiteboard out and writing down similar rules to your own. My only difference is that I was looking for some kind of play on words to make it stick closer to someones’ mind.
Sam Walker says
Thanks Joey! And no, trust me I was trying for a play on words or something quirky as well. But nothing was available. Sigh. Glad I’m not the only one with the dilemma.