"blogism" is out

May 21, 2008 1:21 PM

Help me think of ways to think of a name for my new blog!

I have a long-running blog on a specific topic that I'm about to abandon for a new blog that's going to focus on more general media and cultural criticism, but I can't think of a name! I'm not so much looking for someone to come up with a name as to suggest ways of going about thinking of one, or to clue me in to naming trends that I may not realize are cliches. Here's what I've decided so far:

• The ist/ism school of blog naming is played out.
  
  
• I like titles that are phrases or sentences.
  
  
• I have a weakness for made up/compound words (I liked "quantrarian" before I found out it was the name of a company) but I realize that they can sound pretentious and be hard to remember.

posted by transona5 to writing & language (11 comments total)

:) http://xkcd.com/181/
posted by cmiller at 1:29 PM on May 21

best place to look for any sort of off the wall name for a band, or anything, is by checking the racing form for names of horses.

my .02
posted by timsteil at 1:30 PM on May 21

I recommend something that's not too complicated and that's easy to search for. Something that's synonymous with a bunch of other things isn't easy to search for. For instance, Kodak is a famously smart brand name because it didn't mean anything before it was invented as the name for the Kodak company, and it's clear how to pronounce it from the spelling. To use band names as examples: the band Stars is not conducive to searches and thus wouldn't be a good blog name either, while Soundgarden is catchy, easy to spell and pronounce, and easy to search for -- there's nothing else called "Soundgarden."

If you can come up with any short, unique phrase by playing around with the letters in your name, that would be good.

The worst cliche is self-deprecating names. Do a blog-specific search for things like "incoherent rants" and "random babblings," and you come up with tons of results. It's really played out.

Also, have one clear name for your blog that's the same as, or closely related to, your URL. For instance, Atrios/Eschaton -- I always forget which is his pseudonym and which is his blog name, or if they're both alternate names for his blog, or what.
posted by Jaltcoh at 1:39 PM on May 21

this is, like, my opinion, man.
posted by pmbuko at 1:41 PM on May 21

Personal blog? Tips on stuff? Recipes? Related to your field? Hard to give an answer without a little more details, at least for me.
posted by misha at 1:45 PM on May 21

The overall idea is that it will be about identifying and challenging dubious ideas that get repeated until they're seen as facts ("Hillary's employing what could be called a 'kitchen sink' strategy." "Did you hear that Hillary's using the kitchen-sink strategy?" "Is this kitchen sink strategy going to be effective?") but I guess that isn't much to go on.

I always thought Atrios/Eschaton was hard to keep straight too.
posted by transona5 at 1:52 PM on May 21

Anechoic sounds like what you mean (from the anechoic chamber, but "anechoic" is hard to spell or pronounce if you aren't familiar with the term.
posted by cardboard at 2:01 PM on May 21

Before worrying about a name, I think you should work on defining your blog. You should be able to describe the purpose of your blog in one sentence. Your post above shows you aren't there yet. When you are, you'll be better able to go about branding your blog.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 2:03 PM on May 21

I'd go with "Talking Points", because that's what I think of when what you describe above happens. People keep repeating things to alter the public's perception of the facts. It's what Stephen Colbert calls Truthiness, but that's trademarked!
posted by misha at 2:25 PM on May 21

Talking Points is a good idea in general but: Talking Points Memo is a big political site already, so it wouldn't be very unique in terms of "branding."

Something involving the similar (but not already associated with a blog) phrase "sound bites" might work?
posted by SoftRain at 2:38 PM on May 21

How about "Have Another Bite"?
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 3:01 PM on May 21