Friday 27 September 2013

What's in a name?

Somebody emailed me recently saying that I should change the name of MyBestFive to something else. He thought it was stupid as it does not tell you anything about what the site does.

Names are very difficult due to limitations: not too long that you cannot remember it; all the obvious ones are already taken and have been for years; trying to encapsulate what you are doing in less than a dozen characters.

We own the site positivehealth.com and when I registered it in 1994 I also tried to get PH but was turned down because at the time they would not accept 2 letter names. I tried PHOnline but this and combinations of it were already taken by phone companies. I tried other combinations without success, so in the end settled for positivehealth and after almost 20 years it seems about right, for me at least.

When I got the email I looked at some other famous names and wondered what the writer might have thought of them.

tumblr – probably would have thought this was for acrobats
Digg - for labourers
delicious - food tasting
Google - good for babies
Windows - window cleaners
facebook - a book about faces
MySpace - for troubled teenagers
We also have: Bebo; 43 things; WAYN and a host of others.

Getting the right name is tough, particularly now as so many billions have been taken already. 

Come to think about it, MyBestFive ‘aint that bad!

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