Personal/Family Domain Names
As more and more people use the Internet for business and social use there has become a growing need for more Personal/Personalized domain names than those provided by free web space and email providers like MSN and Yahoo.
For many domain names seem to be a rather confusing area, and here we hope to remove that confusion by looking at:
- What Is a Domain Name
- Why you may want a Personal/Family Domain Name? and What Makes a Good one.
- How to get a Domain Name and how much they cost.
What Is a Domain Name?
A Domain name is effectively an address. It can be used as the address of a website and for email addresses. In the future in may be used as the address of other services.
So if you have a domain like mydomain.com you can use it as the address of your personal website/homepage e.g. www.mydomain.com and/or email addresses like steve@mydomain.com .
Why Personal/Family Domain Names
It hasn't happened yet but I'm pretty sure that it's only just a matter of time before every one has their own personal domain name.
I remember many years ago when personal car number plates were allowed thinking who would want one?
The answer millions of people. Not only that but they have also become collectors items.
Common uses today are for:
- Personalized email addresses.
- Family/personal websites
Personal names aren't necessary real names; they could also be cartoon characters, book characters, stage names, book names. Just type in www.mickeymouse.com and see where you end up.
What Makes a Good Personal/Family Domain Name?
A good Personal/Family Domain Name:
- Belongs to you.
- Is easy to remember
- You can keep it the rest of your life.
- You can sell it
- You can pass it on.
Understanding and Choosing a Personal Domain Name
A domain name usually has 2 parts separated by a dot:
secondlevel.toplevel e.g. ibm.com
where com is the top level and ibm is the second level. There are several top level domain names to choose from but for personal domain names the two most common are:
.name and .com
The .Name TLD (top level domain name) was introduced specifically to cater for personal names. However, for various reasons it doesn't appear to have become popular and the .com TLD continues to be the preferred choice for many. (See below)
Although there are other top level domain names, some like (.edu and .mil) are reserved for educational establishments and the military. Others are available but not as commonly used -see choosing your domain name for a more detailed discussion.
.me.uk - This is a country specific second level domain name intended for personal domain names. Other countries (e.g. australia - .id.au) offer similar and when available offer a better choice (IMO) than .name and .com.
Individual Names and Family Names
You can choose and register a domain name for use by the entire family or just for an individual.
Family Names
It's possible to register a domain name for use by all the family. This is normally done by using the family surname as the domain name. For example if the family name is smith then the domain name would be:
smith.com
The problem with this is that there are lots of smiths and so its unlikely that the name is still free. Rather than using numbers to pad the name to make it unique as one often sees with Yahoo and Hotmail accounts you could try:
using a prefix like:
- the-e.g. thejones.com
- family- e.g. famliyjones.com
Combining with pre and post suffix e.g
thejonesfamliy.com
Combining husband and wife surnames either directly or hyphenated like
smithjones.com of smith-jones.com or reversed.
If that doesn't work try using the .name TLD e.g.
smith-jones.name
If that doesn't work you could try taking parts of each name and combining them. Like
smjones.com or josmith.com
again you could try user hyphens and the .name extension
If that doesn't work either you could try adding or prefixing:
Middle names, Country, town of birth
If none of that works then adding numbers is the only way left. But don't forget you don't need to just append/pre-pend them. You can also use them to break up the name as well. Like
Smith-4-jones.com
You could even try
smithandjones.com, smithforjones, smithwithjones etc
Catchy Domain Names
Another alternative is not to use the surname but instead to use a catchy domain name. Google, Amazon, Ebay are all business examples.
In the business world they are used for branding and there is no reason why you can't do the same with a personal name, you just need to get creative.
Individual Names
With Individual names you stand a better chance of getting your ideal domain name especially if you have a rare first name. For example my family name is fairly common and so is my first name and my .com domain name is already gone.
However for the rest of my family because their first names are not so common I was able to register their personal domain names.
The problem with individual names is that you have to register multiple domain names, but they are not very expensive, and you can host them all on a single hosting account.
What Next
Before you can finally decide on your name you will need to check that it is available and if so you will need to register it. Having done that you will need to understand what you need to use it.
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