I decided to start a blog. One of the first things Blogger asks you for is your blog name. Now that was a hard question. Hard enough to warrant three seconds of nervous thought before Googling “how to name a blog.” I found an article (the link is that the bottom of this post) whose author asked several questions that he should help anyone name their blog. He encouraged any new blogger to treat these questions as an exercise. As I was considering my answers, I thought to myself “This could be a blog post.”
So now, a blog post:
1. What do you want your blog to be about?
Oof, what a question. I want my blog to about me? I want a virtual space that is my own (relatively speaking) to express anything I want to say or show. The connecting theme won’t necessarily be cooking, cats, gaming, or anything like that. The theme is simply me. The connecting thread between any of the content will be my interest in it. I suppose I envision a combination of social media style posts (pictures, witticisms, life updates), essays about whatever I am thinking about (I guess that could be summed up by “critical thinking”? Living life with intention? Most of the things I think about are like “Why do I use social media and should I? What are the ethics of streaming music? Is plant-based eating better for the environment?”), and maybe fiction. I’ve always wanted a place to post short prose stories.
It is not so much what I want my blog to be about but rather what I want to do with my blog. What I want my blog to do for me. I want it to be a place where I can connect with people I’ve met in real life without the specter of modern social media. Heck, maybe a place where I can connect with people I haven’t met in real life without that risky ability for them to be able to comment and message me. I want it to be a tool to encourage my creativity and where I can have a voice, unwavering and without the fear of fights breaking out in my comments section.
Maybe everything doesn’t need to be effortlessly interactive. Maybe if you really want to talk to me, you should have to reach out and talk directly to me, not just comment into space for all to see. Maybe every conversation doesn’t need an audience. And maybe every thought doesn’t need a response.
2.
Who is your target audience?
Well, after my response to the last question, this is a bit
of an awkward question. Does my life and self-expression have a target
audience?
I hope I will have an audience. I hope that people who know
me will care about me enough to look elsewhere than Facebook to see what I’m up
to. I hope people will be interested in my deeper thoughts, not just pictures
of Hazel (though that will be here too, and I won’t judge if you scroll through
words to catch those sweet, sweet glimpses of feline perfection). I hope people
will be willing to engage with me on my terms. I hope people will look for my
updates, check their emails, start an RSS feed, instead of opting to only
participate in the lives presented to them by an algorithm.
I think some will. Alex will anyway, so that’s nice. Hi
Alex! Thanks for reading!
And if someone stumbles across my blog who doesn’t know me,
and they can get some joy from looking at Hazel’s cute paws, if someone can
feel connected to a stranger who shares their views, if someone can just have a
really interesting thing to read on the subway sometimes, then I will be
honored to provide that.
3.
What is the tone/voice of your blog going to be
like?
See, we keep returning to this problem of expecting my blog
to be a consistent product. It’s not a product. It’s me. What the tone/voice of
my existence and inner life?
4.
Will you be building your brand around you blog
name?
Brand? Oof. Maybe this article wasn’t for me. Is not being a
brand a brand?
5.
Does the blog name read OK when it’s in a domain
URL format?
This is an interesting point. The article proceeds to list
hilarious real-life examples of not thinking about this question like
WhoRepresents.com, ITscrap.com, and SpeedofArt.com. Nice.
6.
What happens if you change or vary your niche?
This is the joy of a blog where the only theme is my
self-expression, right? Like how will I vary that? Start plagiarizing?
7.
Is it easy to say or spell?
Okay, so don’t put my last name in. Noted.
The article then proceeded to list some strategies and
resources for coming up with a blog name. Most of them sounded like they would
produce canned and impersonal titles, but one of them mentioned, “Use words
from another language.” I, of course, thought “Well, perhaps time to pull out
the old Latin degree and put that to use.”
What I decided on was a wordplay using Latin conventions, not
a Latin word itself. You see, Latin turns adjectives into abstract concepts by
putting -itas at the end. Verus (true) becomes veritas (truth,
the concept of being true). Humilis (humble) becomes humilitas (the
concept of being humble). Sounds like our “humility,” right? We do it too, but ended
up shortening -itas to just “-ity.” We have gravity, levity, brevity, civility,
and humanity all from this Latin convention.
I wanted to use that, but with something that symbolized me.
My name ends in an “a” which is a little difficult for adding -itas at
the end. My initials however, are conveniently close to my name, and do not end
with a vowel. L.A.S.
Lasitas. The concept of being me. Now that’s a brand
I can get behind.
Once again, thanks for reading this, Alex.
For the link to the article that originally asked these
questions and inspired this post: https://bloggingwizard.com/choose-a-blog-name/
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