How did you choose your blog's name?
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Last month a poster on social network blogcatalog asked fellow users how they chose the name for their blog. Some were specifically chosen, others were randomly picked and many others were just dumb luck. Picking a blog name can go either way for journalists who either blog under a company name or blog independently.
Whether the names were pre-chosen or not, there are many mainstream news outlets with great names for their blogs. They include Fox News' The Bourbon Room, USA Today's Pop Candy, Time Magazine's Curious Capitalist, The Guardian's Media Monkey, Carpetbagger, The New York Time's fashion blog, Dishing, Boston.com's food blog and the truly original The Fastest Blog on 2 Feet, a lacrosse blog by Washington Post writer Christian Swezey.
If you're a pun person, there is What's Bruin, the LA Times' blog covering UCLA sports teams, Booster Shots, a health blog also from the LA Times, BaltAmour, a dating blog from the Baltimore Sun, and Foam on the Range, the Denver Post's beer blog.
As far as independent bloggers go, I've always been partial to Will Sullivan's choice of Journerdism, a portmanteau of journalism and nerd that perfectly describes the heart of every hardcore multimedia journalist.
As for 10,000 Words, the name came after some heavy deliberation. I initially wanted to call it Prometheus, after the Greek legend who stole fire from the gods and brought it to the people. But sensing that the name was a little heavy, I opted for 10,000 words which, as the about page points out, is a likely answer to how many words in a multimedia story worth.
Now it's your turn. What is your blog's name? Did you choose it yourself or was it chosen for you? Leave a link to your blog in the comments and feel free to share the story behind it.
Whether the names were pre-chosen or not, there are many mainstream news outlets with great names for their blogs. They include Fox News' The Bourbon Room, USA Today's Pop Candy, Time Magazine's Curious Capitalist, The Guardian's Media Monkey, Carpetbagger, The New York Time's fashion blog, Dishing, Boston.com's food blog and the truly original The Fastest Blog on 2 Feet, a lacrosse blog by Washington Post writer Christian Swezey.
If you're a pun person, there is What's Bruin, the LA Times' blog covering UCLA sports teams, Booster Shots, a health blog also from the LA Times, BaltAmour, a dating blog from the Baltimore Sun, and Foam on the Range, the Denver Post's beer blog.
As far as independent bloggers go, I've always been partial to Will Sullivan's choice of Journerdism, a portmanteau of journalism and nerd that perfectly describes the heart of every hardcore multimedia journalist.
As for 10,000 Words, the name came after some heavy deliberation. I initially wanted to call it Prometheus, after the Greek legend who stole fire from the gods and brought it to the people. But sensing that the name was a little heavy, I opted for 10,000 words which, as the about page points out, is a likely answer to how many words in a multimedia story worth.
Now it's your turn. What is your blog's name? Did you choose it yourself or was it chosen for you? Leave a link to your blog in the comments and feel free to share the story behind it.
Labels: blogging
5 Comments:
I chose Astillero as my blog name. Astillero means shipyard in spanish. At the beginning it was meant to be more like a netlabel than a blog, so the name was a metaphor for all the things I hoped to build with it. I did build lots of things with it, untangible things like a better knowledge of myself, my passions and my motivations to be a journalist.
commented by 
Carlos Alonso, 11:16 AM
Carlos Alonso, 11:16 AM
Thanks for the shout out, Mark!
I chose 2thehead because the blog was originally going to be me and a friend who had a name that began with J also. It was originally going to be called "2 J's To The Head", a play on a phrase that makes you think about smoking marijuana. That didn't happen so I took the 2 J's out.
I'm a journalist with a photoblog called "The Occasional Odd Crop." I wanted something that said "photography" and was a bit quirky so that it would stand out on any list of photoblogs.
Most of the words on my blog are photo descriptions, but I sometimes post a few paragraphs about something else. When I do, I call it "The Occasional Odd Thought."
Most of the words on my blog are photo descriptions, but I sometimes post a few paragraphs about something else. When I do, I call it "The Occasional Odd Thought."
When I decided to set up a blog, I wanted to have a name that had some resonance with the place I hailed from: a city called Mysore in south India. I decided on "churumuri", a not-so-heavy, not-so-light snack made of puffed rice, unique to the place. It is what my blog also, not so heavy, not so light.
