Web Worker Daily

I spend a significant amount of time, more than I probably realize, naming things both online and offline. We have usernames, Twitter handles, blogs, training classes, books, events, and so much more. Each one needs to have a name, and many of us probably don’t spend as much time as we should when picking a name. Personally, I hate coming up with names: the brainstorming to come up with something unique, the paralysis of choosing, the uncertainty about choosing something that won’t work as well as you thought it would, having to change the name later, and more. I prefer being poked with a sharp stick.

I started thinking more about naming this week when I went to my fitness tracking web site, Gyminee, and found myself on a new web site, DailyBurn. After poking around on the blog to find out more about the change, I found this:

So, why the name change? First, we noticed that while Gyminee was a memorable name, nobody could spell it! This is significant considering that people need to type in our web address in order to sign up.  Second, while we liked Gyminee, we wanted a name that would resonate better with what we are all about; improving health one step at a time, essentially daily change.  Oh yeah, we also got a little tired of hearing jokes about a cricket and hearing, “Isn’t that the name of a kid’s clothing store?”

As painful as it is to change names, I think they probably made a wise choice. I’ve made similar choices in the past. For example, I’ve renamed my blog three times. It started out as the “Open Source Culture” blog, but I found the topic of open source to be too narrow when my interests started spreading out into many other areas of online communities and social networking. I wanted to keep something similar, so I dropped the word “Source” and changed it to the “Open Culture” blog, which turned out to be a terrible name. It meant nothing, it wasn’t memorable, and there were many other blogs and podcasts with the same name.

I finally got fed up and decided to come with a brand-new name and a real logo for my blog. I wanted something that would evolve with me and wouldn’t be tied to a particular technology. I also wanted something that was tied to me, but was more creative than using my name. I came up with the idea to use an anagram of my name, and I cycled through several of them before I found one that I liked with an available domain name: Fast Wonder. For the logo, I went with a Southeastern Five Lined Skink, a very fast type of lizard that I would often see on my grandparents’ deck in Tennessee when I was a kid. This skink is black, orange, and vibrant blue, so I took its colors as the scheme for my blog.

Originally, I had a static web site using the fastwonder.com URL and put the blog at fastwonderblog.com. In retrospect, this was a domain naming mistake. Finding the right name to use for your URL is just as important as the name itself, and I should have spent more time thinking about the domain names and how they would work together. If I was starting from scratch, I would have put the blog somewhere on the fastwonder.com URL, but I think the SEO hit from moving it now outweighs the potential benefits of moving it, so I’ve decided to leave it on fastwonderblog.com.

Here are a few things you might want to think about the next time you need to pick a name.

• Is the domain name available?
• Is it unique and memorable?
• Does it fit well with your business and the image you want to project?
• Will the name grow with you or limit you later?
• Will it be confused with other names?
• Are there any obvious jokes about crickets or anything else that might get annoying?
• Can people spell the name?
• Is it short enough not to be annoying when typing it on an iPhone or other mobile device?

What mistakes have you made with past names? What steps did you take to fix those naming mistakes?

Image by stock.xchng user thenys