How I Came Up With My Blog Name

Once I decided to create a blog with my own domain, the need to come up with a name became a priority. After all, I’m diving in with the intention of sticking to it, and I want something that is rather permanent.

My considerations for my personal/lifestyle blog:

• Simple and easy to remember
• Meaningful to me
• Gives people an idea of what the blog is about
• Reflects my personality
• Something I cannot outgrow
• Something that would not restrict my ability to talk about different subjects
• Grammatically sound

What I did:

• Came up with names/keywords I’d like to use
• Kept in mind different forms of the keywords
  • For instance, express: expresses, expressed expressing, expression, expressor, expresser, etc.
• Searched the thesaurus for alternate words to use
• Played with the words, mixing and matching different combination/sequence
  • For instance, lifeexpresses, expressinglife, lifeexpressor, lifeexpressed, lifeexpression, etc.
• Added articles before the name, like “a/an” or “the”
• Wrote down every name I could think of (that is available) on a piece of paper, then strike them off
• Said them out loud and looked at them in print
• Browse other blog names for inspirations

I read blogs about naming blogs, and learnt that other things I could do include:

• Use my name
• Come up with unique words by combining different words (wordoids)
• Use another language
• Playing with words with similar sounds (alliterations)

What happened:

So I spent an entire day doing those things and still didn’t come up with a blog name I like. But I’m not surprised since this happens to me every time I tried to start a blog. I went to bed instead.

Of course I ended up checking availability of possible names as I waited for sleep.

This morning I reviewed the names – they were better than the ones I came up with when I was at my desk, but nothing stood out. After breakfast, I came back to my desk and saw my journal with its dark blue sleeve. And it came to me.

Dark Blue Journal.

And that’s how the blog name came about, a casual glance at a journal I was reluctant to tarnish with my script. For 3 years, I had put off using it because it was so beautiful… I took it out from its special drawer only a few days ago to attempt a Bullet Journal. In a way, it can’t be more apt, since I have put off creating a proper blog for almost 3 years too.

It’s not the perfect name, it may get lost on the internet but since I’m not using it to make a lot of money, it is okay. It feels right. I think that’s what’s matters most in my case.

In conclusion, what I learnt from the naming experience is that sometimes you get better ideas in bed:p; sometimes it just has to come to you; sometimes we think ourselves into a corner. When we look away from the screen or piece of paper, sometimes we get rewarded with the idea that strikes our chord. And sometimes it’s an object.