Blogging word cloud

This post is inspired by a post a little while back by JoAnn at Sunstone Journal (formerly Midnight Harmony) about coming up with a blog name. I thought we could chat a bit about how people came up with their blog names.

When I started my blog in 2017, I was vaguely contemplating starting an outreach-based mental health nursing private practice. Mental Health @ Home was the name I'd come up with for this potential project, and I figured I might as well use that as the name for the blog. The business idea quickly fell by the wayside, but the name remained.

The name works, but it's never really grabbed me. I've contemplated a name change a few times, mostly because the name is too generic to be good for SEO purposes. If you Google Mental Health @ Home, a lot of other sites will show up before mine. However, that contemplating has never lasted long, in part because I haven't thought of a name that I'm really keen on, but also because I've put a fair bit of work into creating a web presence as Mental Health @ Home, and a rebrand seems like more work than I care to bother with.

When it comes to other people's blog names, I tend to take notice of them mostly when I first come across them. When I've been following someone for a while, I start to think of it as a name rather than as the constituent words, and I mostly stop thinking of the meanings of the words involved.

Most of the new followers I get are spammy, so blog names that are somewhat indicative of what the blog is about are most likely to stand out so I'll go have a look at them. Because I'm mostly into the mental health niche, blog names that relate to that niche are most likely to catch my eye.

If you want your own domain name, that's something to figure in as well. If a site with your desired blog name already exists and you'd have to go with a funky spelling, it may be hard for people to remember your URL.

There are a few blog name generators out there, like ThemeIsle's, that can be of assistance for people like me who aren't very creative. They also show you domain names that are available.

I'm guessing that the naming process is generally more carefully thought through for people who've already had a blog or who are renaming an existing blog. Then you've got people like me know were starting off knowing sweet bugger all about blogging and just picking whatever name came to mind.

So now it's over to you—how did you choose your blog name?

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