Naming your blog

Ideally the name of your blog will represent the subject matter.  We can take the Blogmaster General website & blog as an example.  We went through many different names before settling on Blogmaster General.  We were trying to come up with a name that when people saw it they would have a pretty good idea as to the contents of the site.  We derived Blogmaster General from the Postmaster General title, thus identifying ourselves as the Top Blog (get it Top Dog – Top Blog… we are so witty here).  Hopefully when people see the name Blogmaster General they think of a site that knows about blogging. 

So, if your blog is about your family so Grandma can see what you are up to, the name could be something meaningful to you & Grandma.  You could also just use your name, although that is highly NOT RECOMMENDED since there are a lot of bad people in the world.  A for instance for a personal blog:  you and your child love visiting Grandma at her apartment and always have hot cinnamon rolls when you arrive.  Your blog name could be Gmas CRolls, Warm Rolls, Grandma Smells Like Cinnamon, etc.  This would give a personal touch to your personal blog.  Of course you and your Grandma are just going to Bookmark your site anyway so you can quickly go there and don’t have to remember the full address.

If you are blogging about a social cause, or some niche field and will put advertising on it, you will want to name it relative to your subject.  For instance:  a blog about lip cancer:  Lip Cancer Blog or Lip Cancer or Cancer of the Lip, etc.  A blog about reviewing computer scanners: The Scanner Review or Don’t Get Scanned or Scan This, etc. 

One thing to note when coming up with a blog / site name:  do not use trademarked or copyrighted names within your name.  Just adding words before &/or after a trademarked name does not magically un-trademark it.  I am not a trademark lawyer, so you will have to do some searches on your own to get into the details of whether or not you can use a name.  Bottom line, it is much easier to just not do it.

Now that you have the basics, let me throw another log on the fire:  is your name already taken?  When we were coming up with the Blogmaster General name, we tried about 10 other names first and all were taken.   We simply created a list of possible names and then ranked them and then searched to see if the name was taken.  For most personal blogs this should not be too much of a problem, but still, you don’t want Grandma finding the wrong “Grandma’s Cinnamon Rolls” site.  Imagine her surprise when she sees that you have a son who is 14 and into motorcycle racing instead of a daughter who is 4 and loves pretty ponies.  For those of you who will be using their own site, this really isn’t an option since you can’t register a site that someone else already owns.

How many names did you go through before you found one that worked?  Having trouble, maybe we can help – list some of the stuff you are going to write about and I will comment back with some names.

Blogmaster General