Personal Domain Names

Personal Domain Names

 
 

Businesses have slowly caught on to the importance of having a domain name, but individuals have not.

 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.

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.

 
 

Why Personal Domain Names

For people doing business on the internet it is a form of branding. Many of the Internet gurus have their own domain name. For others using it purely for personal reasons.

However regardless of the reason your own domain name is very useful as once you have it you can use it for:

• A website/homepage
  
• Email
  

and it

• belongs to you.
  
• It is easy to remember
  
• You can keep it the rest of your life.
  
• You can sell it
  
• You can pass it on
  

Domain names could, in the future, be the primary way people contact each other. Imagine in years to come typing a domain name into a cell phone. It isn't here yet but it is a logical step as we move to IP enabled phones (VOIP).

One of the trends mentioned in the future trends site is that everyone will have their own homepage, and if that's the case, they will need a domain name.

Choosing a Domain Name

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.

Individual Names and 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

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 use 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

You just need to get creative.

Once you have chosen the family name you can then subdivide it for each member of the family.