Picking a Blog Name, Part Two
(To read Part One, click here)
After officially abandoning the title Don’t Read This, You’ll Only Encourage Him! I did what any creative guy would do: polled my Facebook friends for steal-able ideas, explaining that I needed a name which represented more than just one side of endlessly intriguing, multifaceted me. Just play along, you know how I can be (or you will soon).
The minute my friend Barb suggested Mitchellaneous (her long-time nickname for me), virtually all of our friends stopped suggesting other titles and threw in with her. “That’s it!” I thought. However, since Mitchellaneous wasn’t as thematically specific as, say, Kenny’s World of Ferrets, I decided to add a subtitle that would indicate the site featured stories with meaningful messages.
I happily began the process of acquiring my URL, but was soon disappointed to learn the name “Mitchellaneous” had been taken by a blog site featuring illegal perversions, including graphic bestiality and child pornography! (Yes, I alerted WordPress, and believe it has since been removed.) There are also a number of other perfectly innocent people using the title, including a Canadian writer named Mitchell Toews who, even though his name is not all that similar to mine, pops up every time I Google my name–which I do every month or two for security reasons (and because I like to see my name in print).
So I reluctantly abandoned using Mitchellaneous as a site title, but as an homage re-labeled my Miscellaneous Category “Mitchellaneous.” Then, disappointed and a little daunted, I went back to the drawing board. What name could I give my blog that was both unique and—new concern—safe? Well…
There was one name that was literally staring me in the face every time I logged on to Facebook or Twitter, or handed my wallet to a policeman…
“No, officer, I’m sure the light was just a very orangey yellow.”
To read Part Three, click here.
Mitch Teemley 
Pingback: Don’t Read This, You’ll Only Encourage Him | Mitch Teemley
Switch to Mitch, the guy with God’s Best Pitch?
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Or does that sound too campaigny? lol Sorry I’m a fan of rhyming and alliterations and fun things like that.
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Maybe not, unless I decide to run for president! ;>)
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Oooh I could totally imagine an awesome situation where you created the blog around that campaigny type name and then the world awakens to the reality of how awesome are and how they just need you to be President. And then bam! you already have your slogan for Presidency.
I’d vote to make that story a reality.
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I’d tell you that I found this post clever and amusing–but I wouldn’t want to encourage you. ;
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;>)
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I can relate. I thought I had come up with a great pen name – “Paige Turner.” Later my son informed me that there was already a female impersonator with that name. Oh well.
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Probably just as well.
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I think you are right…the name on your driver’s license fits you
and your blog just fine.
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For future consideration: “Much Mitch”
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Hah! Or maybe Mitchalot (has a King Arthury sort of ring to it ;>)
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I wouldn’t write Kenny’s World of Ferrets off too quickly.
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“Don’t Read This …” is a good post title but would have been long and cloying (as well as limiting) as a name for the whole blog. “Mitchellaneous” would have been good if not already taken. While using one’s own name is dull (and confusing if one has a rather common name), I do think it is a good choice here. Not too common or long. Not limiting.
There is much to be said for keeping a tolerable name that is well-known, even if something that might be intrinsically better is eventually thought up. Consider the Environmental Defense Fund (aka “EDF”), whose name makes it sound like a foundation. By the time EDF decided that just “Environmental Defense” would be catchier and not so limiting, everybody and his uncle knew the organization as “EDF” and still called it that after the name was changed. Designing a new “ED” logo and printing some new stationery was not enough to popularize the change, and ED reverted to officially being EDF. BTW, the failed try at changing the name is the only bad call I can think of, after many years of close attention to EDF’s excellent work.
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Yeah, and ED is also widely used as an acronym for erectile dysfunction. I’m not sure I’d want to head an organization called that. ;>)
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I was thinking the same. Someone responded to one of my testimonies that she too had struggled with ED. I thought, “Wha —?” After reading through my story again, I finally figured out she meant “eating disorders.”
Maybe we have got to the point where we’re abbreviating TOO MUCH.
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Yep!
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Erectile dysfunction was still called “impotence” when the misguided name change was tried. It’s good that EDF reversed the change well before Viagra came along. 🙂
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My Blogs name sort of just came out of nowhere on Accident.
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So you’re name isn’t Caden? I just assumed it was. Or do you mean the 738 part?
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No my website is theh2digroup .com that name came out of nowhere. My name is Caden, and 738 are simply my–i wouldn’t say “Lucky, but Special numbers.
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Awesome blog
&()&()
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Thank you.
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So here I change my blog name recently and I love it, but the issue is whiles I change the name and the site name I lost all my followers.
http://yovelee.wordpress.com
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Aww, sorry to hear that. Well, onward and upward.
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