jdlogo My good friend Babs wrote a post yesterday about how she named her blog, Beetle’s Memories ‘n Ramblings, or Beetle Blog for short.

I thought some of you might be interested in the evolution of my blog and how it came to be named The Junk Drawer.

I say evolution because that wasn’t the first name for it, at least not for the URL.

When I first started blogging in July, 2007, I joined up with Google’s Blogger publishing system and chose a name for my Blogspot address. For some reason, I picked my real name. My old URL used to be kathyfrederick.blogspot.com.

While I strangely chose my real name for the URL, I had to come up with a name for the blog itself. At the time, I planned to blog about miscellaneous items that interested me or topics that could be of help to readers or at least entertain them.

1. Computing tips

2. Language and linguistics

3. Humor

Based on having a mish mash of topics I wrote about, my first choice for a blog name was Miscellanea. Now. Look at that word and how it’s spelled. Even the editing software I use to publish doesn’t think it’s a word. Could you spell it correctly with a gun to your head?

I quickly realized that it would make a bad name.

So where’s another place you throw miscellaneous things? Why, The Junk Drawer. Of course!

And so the name was born.

Over time I stopped writing about the first two topics, computing and language, and stuck to what readers seemed to enjoy more, the humor stuff.

When I moved off the Blogger platform in December, 2007, I had to register a new domain name and forward my old Blogspot address to the new one. After dropping two of three topics, I wasn’t really blogging miscellaneously anymore, but I still liked The Junk Drawer name, and so the hunt was on for that domain name.

Initially, I wanted JunkDrawer.com, but that was already taken and I wasn’t prepared to spend almost $2,000 to buy it from the owner. TheJunkDrawer.com was also taken. Strike two.

So I risked choosing a domain that was a little longer than those and settled with JunkDrawerBlog.com.

My suggestion for anyone thinking of starting blogging is to think long and hard about a name. Think of it as your brand name. And try to get the easiest-to-spell and shortest domain name possible. You never know how successful your blog will become, and so you want it to be memorable.

I’m interested to know how you came up with your blog names. Are you happy with what you chose? If you had to do it over, would you have chosen something else?

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