Naming Conventions
When I decided to join the fray, to step forward, to become another one of the approximately 239 trillion other bloggers on the planet, there were a lot of decisions to make. What sort of content will I have? What tone will my writing take? How will I distinguish myself? How will I connect with an audience? How will I even get an audience?
What the heck will I choose as a domain name?
It’s the biggie. It’s your brand. People remember it! (One hopes.) They bookmark it! They subscribe! They Twitter about it! They name-drop it in a winking manner in the sparkling conversations of the cognoscenti!
All the good ones are taken.
Domain names are so inexpensive now, people register them on a whim. Companies snap them up and resell them. It’s getting so a girl can’t set up her own corner without coming up with a convoluted, ridiculous, or over-long name for her website.
Turns out I know a little about convoluted over-long names. My last name is Raffensperger, and I promise it’s pronounced just like it’s spelled, those thirteen letters can just throw you for a loop. And I have a little experience picking online handles too. I have had an internet presence in one way or another since 1993. In about 1999, I found myself needing to select a login for a discussion board so that I could discuss Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my peers. This was important. It should be fun, but memorable. It should be snappy. It should be informed with the same hip, self-aware cleverness that permeated Joss Whedon’s first great creation.
Oh dammit all the good ones are taken!!
Ultimately I had to pick something, and I thought it might be clever to work in romantic relationships, always such a minefield in Whedon’s creations…and frankly a minefield in actuality. The thinking led from there to inamorata, which was – surprise! – taken, which led me to feel a little bitter, which made me think there was room for a new word in the world. EXamorata. The not-loved one. The outsider. The lonely eye at the window. The lone wolf! The fierce individual! The incredible cliche!
As a toss-off login it was great. Really did the job. It was kind of fun to sign my little private messages in the forums “Ex.” It was sorta punk rock, even. Since it’s a word I made up myself, it has the advantage of rarely being taken when I am faced anew with a need for a clever handle online somewhere. I’m on other discussion boards, and Twitter, with this name. Of all the long, convoluted, ridiculous names I could have picked, why not pick one I already used? One that I was already comfortable with? One that I made up all by myself?
Welcome to examorata.com.
May 19, 2009
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Jen · 
3 Comments
Tags: introduction · Posted in: names
3 Responses
Hooray WordPress blog! I dig the green tones and coincidentally spent an evening earlier this week helping Karal get hers set up as well. All the cool kids are doing it!
It has a tiny picture like an icon! Nice! I think I might spend some part of my weekend rejiggering my own theme.
Joss Whedon is a great director, most of the science fiction series that i love are created by him.~-”
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