Sep 04 2008
Would you have come to Lemurwhistle.com?
When we started out on this little experiment (by that I mean MentalMagma.com), we decided that one of the things we wanted to do was write about the experience of starting a website and internet-community. For various reasons we haven’t done that since the early weeks. So, we thought we’d do some more of that and share with you guys the other names we considered for our website.
If you’ve never tried to register a domain name, you may not be aware that basically every name is taken (as exemplified in this SNL skit). Seriously, go to Register.com and try to think of a new name. Let me try to come up with a few right now. Applebutts.com? Taken, but nothing is there. HippoDance.com, registered, and it’s just what you’d expect. SausageNickels.com, RobotNookie.com? Okay, they’re available, but you get my point. It’s almost like someone used a random word generator and registered everything it spit out. The only names left are the untermenschen of domain names, the .nets, .orgs, & .bizs.
When thinking of names, it’s so frustrating to realize that every idea you have (that you think is original) has already been thought of, made into a website, and probably executed better than you would have done it. We ended up just brainstorming a bunch of weird names and narrowing them down to the few that were still available. We debated ad nauseum the merits of each one. You have to worry about how easy to remember the name is, how appropriate it is for the site, how hard it is to spell, what logos the name lends itself to, etc. Here’s your chance to second guess us. We humbly submit to you the 5 other names we considered using for our site.
We hope you’ll laugh with us and not at us. :)
Loading ...Please post your comments on the names, which ones are the worst, etc. Have any of you ever tried to make up an original domain name?
September 4th, 2008 at 2:21 am
I’ve got to say that Mental Magma is an awesome name for this site. It makes me think of someone brainstorming, which is exactly what we do here. Mental Magma puts the other ideas to shame (not that they aren’t good. Actually, I’m pretty hungry right now and I could totally go for one of God’s burritos). If you guys had a contest, I don’t think anyone could top the name you picked. Who came up with it anyway?
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Gabriel reply on September 4th, 2008 8:30 am:
With the exception of LemurWhistle, I came up with all of the names. At least that’s my recollection. If you ask my partners (Clayton & David), they might say that I always think I’m the one who came up everything. LemurWhistle was created by a friend of mine whose username you may recognize from previous contests, snoconegirl. We have a great fondness for LemurWhistle because it captures a certain whimsy we wanted to convey. But, for exactly the reasons you mentioned, we thought MM better symbolized this site.
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September 4th, 2008 at 2:33 am
I agree. Although LemurWhistle is tempting with the upper-case W, it doesn’t speak to the underground creative fire you’ve brought to the surface. You just need a sister site like GuavaLava.com (that IS hard!) for the bleed over.
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September 4th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Xuzzle just makes me happy, though.
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September 4th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It’s hard to pronounce stuff starting with X. Why even have an X if you pronounce it as a Z?
I am fond of animals and I like Lemur Whistle. Plus a lemur is more cuddly than a brain. Hard to sit on the couch and eat popcorn with a brain. In fact, with TV watching, it’s preferable to not have a brain.
However, I like Mental Magma and it suits the site.
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Gabriel reply on September 4th, 2008 6:16 pm:
I think Zuzzle.com was our first thought, but it was taken. Plus words that start with X are fun.
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September 4th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I call shotgun on LemurWhistle.com!
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Padma reply on September 4th, 2008 9:58 pm:
Maybe foxwhistle for you!
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October 26th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
It’s not totally true that all domains have gone. Try some of the tools at http://www.domainnamesoup.com. If you use the thesaurus, you can find quite a few.
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