This post contains affiliate links. See our affiliate disclaimer here.
Coming up with your blog name can be stressful. It’s not exactly a haircut; a blog name can stay with you for quite a while.
Once you become known by it, it’s not really an easy thing to switch.
And that’s just the beginning! If you’re like us, the initial 50 or so brilliant blog names you came up with were already taken.
But you don’t have to pull your hair out to come up with a solid blog name! Here are some great tips on how to come up with a blog name that’ll stick.
I’ve included blog name examples as well since, as you’ll probably appreciate, seeing other people’s catchy blog names can really help in getting those creative juices flowing!
How to Come up with a Blog Name
General Tips:
- Explore Your Niche
- Keep It Simple
- Get in Touch with Your Emotions
- Think About Physical Objects
- Make It Keyword Rich
- Aim for the “.com” but Don’t Stress over It
- Be Witty
- Use Alliteration
- Language Check
- Take Your Time
Ideas On Finding Your Blog Name:
Bonus Tips:
General Tips:
1. Explore Your Niche
Get a good handle on the other blogs in your niche, not just the ones you’re used to reading.
Doing this will not only give you a better feel for how your niche works but also perhaps spark some inspiration to help you find that perfect name for your blog.
Nothing gets the creative juices going like observing the best there is in a particular field.
But don’t just think about the bigger bloggers in your niche you already know, go explore and find new, fresh influences.
2. Keep It Simple
When I was younger, I worked for two startups (we’ll keep them nameless) that never gave a thought to how their name sounded on the phone.
As a result, most people would need the names (both made of compounds that didn’t sound right together) repeated several times.
Someone thought the names were brilliant in a boardroom…pretty sure that guy never touched a phone in his life.
You don’t want to have to spell out your blog’s name or explain the wordplay every time you meet someone in real life and they ask you what you do for a living.
“Oh, I’m a blogger.” “Cool, what’s your site name?”
That question should never inspire a cringe when you’re asked.
A great way to test this out is to bounce the ideas off your more honest friends. If your name requires an intricate explanation, it may be for the best to let it be.
Examples of awesomely simple blog names:
3. Get in Touch with Your Emotions
Is there something you want your readers to feel when they look at your content? What sort of a vibe do you want to project? What are you inwardly about?
Is there a centralized mantra or something that symbolizes it? What makes it unique? What makes you unique?
These are all valid questions to ask when coming up with a blog name. These feeling based questions become even more relevant if you’re doing a multi-niche blog and coming up with an all-encompassing name is proving difficult.
If you just write a list of everything your blog’s about this can help this process immensely.
This is a good place to push yourself to have a wide selection and possibly borrow someone else’s brain as well.
If your name requires an intricate explanation, it may be for the best to let it be.
Be ambitious about the number of words you write down and commit to coming back to it again later. Look over all the different words you’ve written down and see if any of them work in a combination.
Also, look into variations of these words.
Even if nothing comes of the first time or times of looking at it, keep it around and don’t throw it out, it still may prove useful when you come at it with fresh eyes sometime later.
If there are words in other languages that sound right, aren’t impossible to spell, and don’t need tons of explanation, then they might also be something to work with.
Blog Name Examples:
4. Think About Physical Objects
Does your blog’s content relate to specific objects in the physical world?
Are there any physical objects that represent what your blog is about?
Off the top of my head, here are some samples of objects tied to specific niches to get the creative juices flowing: saddlebags, airplanes, cookie dough, homebrewing equipment, champagne, or fat stacks of cash.
Linking to actual objects in the physical world may just help you come up with the perfect blog name.
Blog Name Examples:
Tachiai — you probably know all the other physical things associated with the other example blog names listed in this category so I’ll explain this one. The tachiai is the opening charge in a bout of sumo wrestling, hence the name for the biggest English language sumo blog.
5. Make It Keyword Rich
This is a brilliant way to make sure you get organic search traffic to your site. That’s one thing Chasing Foxes doesn’t actually have going for it.
Not a lot of people research fox chasing…unless they’re into fox hunting and this blog isn’t about that.
Blog Name Examples:
6. Aim for the “.com” but Don’t Stress over It
Getting a “.com” domain name for your blog should be your top priority—they’re standard, recognizable and used by all the big sites.
But the reality is, most domain names ending in “.com” just aren’t available to purchase anymore.
And unless you have the money to try and buy it off the owner, you should probably look at the next best alternatives—“.org” followed by “.net”
However, stress not! You shouldn’t ever feel limited by that.
If you’re clever enough, you can take advantage of other top-level domains that are less known.
For example, did you know that “.blog” is a top-level domain you can purchase? How cool would it be to have a blog with the domain name “my.blog”?
That particular example is taken, but you get the point! Be creative about finding the perfect domain name for your blog and don’t stress out if the “.com” is already taken.
To be honest, most of your site traffic won’t be coming from people typing your blog’s domain address into their search bars anyway! So make your blog’s domain name memorable, clever and catchy, and then stress not.
7. Be Witty
Everyone’s attracted to names that sound witty, so give some thought to how you can perhaps do a play on words or phrases that people are already familiar with.
Blog Name Examples:
8. Use Alliteration
Alliteration is when words right next to or near to each other start out with the same sound.
Why use alliteration? Since sentences starting with similar sound smart and spiffy.
A good way to create alliteration is to attach an adjective (descriptor word) to a noun that is connected to your blog’s name.
Blog Name Examples:
9. Language Check
If you’re blogging (or just naming your blog) in a language that’s not your first, have a native speaker look over your name first and make sure your blog name is good to go.
For example, a food blogger might open the thesaurus to check out synonyms for overeating and find the word “crapulence”. But is that a good name?
No, it definitely isn’t. And any native English speaker could tell you why in an instance!
There’s also a great travel blogger from Europe I found on Instagram (not naming names) whose blog name sounds like a (slightly awkward/giggle-inducing) sexual innuendo even though it’s exclusively about travel.
To be fair, she probably went to the thesaurus and looked up synonyms for the word “explore” and found the word probe…she probably even felt pretty clever about her find.
You can feel clever too, just have a native speaker check it first to make sure there aren’t any hidden meanings you might not like in your new blog name.
Understand that this is supposed to be a process and that you might have to actually give this some real thought.
10. Take Your Time
No really, for us, it was a weeks-long process. Grace looked at me and said,
“What about Chasing Foxes? I think I like it, Silas.”
“Whatever, I don’t care as long as we get it launched, Babe.”
It’d been multiple weeks with no solution. We’d had multiple epic “naming sessions” where we’d sit down and determine that we were not getting up until we came up with something brilliant!
You can’t force creativity, you can only give it room to happen.
Please don’t get frustrated. There are literally a billion registered domains on the Internet. That includes all the domain names people have bought but they’re not using.
Think about that…A billion potential blog names taken.
A lot of good names have already been picked already but that doesn’t mean you can’t come up with something brilliant! It just might take a little while—or not.
If you’re starting to get stressed that you’re not coming up with something wonderful that’s not already taken, then take a deep breath.
Understand that this is supposed to be a process and that you might have to actually give this some real thought. Understand that you’re not alone in this, other people deal with it too when trying to come up with an awesome blog name.
Ideas On Finding Your Blog Name:
1. Mess Around with Words
Similar to using alliteration (as I mentioned above), there are a number of other clever things you can do with words that’ll help you come up with a blog name, or at least improve one that you’ve been mulling over.
Here are some literary devices you can use to manipulate words effectively:
- Portmanteau — blending words together for effect, e.g. “smog” comes from smoke and fog
- Onomatopoeia — sounds that are very close to the sound they depict, e.g. splash, bang
- Puns — a word used to imply more than one meaning
- Nicknames — a shortened version of a longer name, e.g. “mag” from magazine
- Wordoid — a made-up word that encapsulates a new concept
In regards to using any literary device, journalist Bill McNish over at TheSelfEmployed counsels, “Keep it simple though, and aim for positive connotations.”
That’s right…keep it simple!
Don’t try too hard and force your blog name to contain a literary device, but if you stumble upon a good and simple one then you’re probably in on a winner!
2. Try a Blog Name Generator
There are many free blog name generators that you can use online to help you out.
Here are some that will help you come up with the perfect blog name!
- Blog name generator
- Domain name generator
- Portmanteau generator
- Company name generator
- Wordoid generator
3. Name It After Yourself
Perhaps you’ve been asking yourself, “Should I name my blog after myself?”
Well, why not? Many others have.
Whether you use your full name, part of it or add something else to it, this about guarantees you to have something original if you’re flexible.
Blog Name Examples:
You don’t even need to use your name as a part of your blog name. Some bloggers simply use describing words for their blog names that reveal a bit about who they are.
Blog Name Examples:
4. Bust out the Thesaurus
Brainstorm some words that describe your blog, what it’s about, and any words or feelings you might associate with the topic.
Find something you like? Great, make sure you 100% know the meanings of the word…all of them.
(You don’t want to be like email service provider ConvertKit who tried to change their name to “seva” only to find out it meant something a bit different than what they originally thought.)
Sometimes the thesaurus gives you words that have a similar meaning but might not actually work for the message you’re trying to convey.
As a general rule, I’d also say that if you’re at a party full of strangers and you don’t feel like spelling it or explaining the arcane reference then you should probably stay away.
It’s hard to know who used the thesaurus and who didn’t when naming their blog, but down below are some examples of blog names that were at least potentially named this way.
Blog Name Examples:
Bonus Tips:
1. Snatch up Domain Names Quickly
If you start making good money, you may find that building businesses are really fun.
If you discover that’s what you’re about then go ahead and snatch up the domain names and social media handles for all the companies you plan to start eventually.
Want to own a winery, a marketing agency, venture capital firm, or an airline? Just snatch it up now.
If you end up not using it yourself, you may be able to sell it on later to someone else who wants it.
2. Fix Confusing Names with Redirects
Thinking about getting or already have a blog name that is a bit confusing for people to spell?
A way around this is to snatch up the alternative spelling domains and simply redirect them to your site to avoid this confusion. Your hosting site will be able to set up this redirect for you.
For example, the photo-sharing site Flickr also ended up buying “Flicker” because so many people were typing it into their address bars!
If you were looking for some tips on how to come up with a blog name, I hope this helped you out!
If you would, go ahead and let us know your favorite blog names in the comments so that others can see and be inspired.
Happy blog name hunting!
Subscribe to Get the Tools That Make My Blog Successful!
When you join my weekly newsletter, I'm going to send you out some insider advice and the tools I use to make my blog successful!
Chasing Foxes was started in 2016 as a way for Grace and her husband, Silas, to start traveling. However, they started to realize that they had a passion for improving themselves, and wanted to help others level up their lives as well. So whether it's with cooking, travel, or staying healthy, they want to help you better your life bit by bit, as they do the same.
My favorite blog name is a mom blog called Tater Tots and Jello. I think it’s perfect!
Super cute! 😀