One of the most popular blogs tracked by Technorati (currently #14) is PostSecret. It’s a “community art project” where people anonymously submit their secrets on postcards, and it’s quite compelling, in an emotionally voyeuristic kind of way. You find all the juicy stuff you’d expect to find: confessions and accusations of infidelity, descriptions of other real and imagined transgressions, proclamations of love, self-destructive and suicidal thoughts, blasphemy. There’s also funny and just plain weird stuff.

The name PostSecret is pretty straightforward, but also unsettling in a way that’s appropriate for this material. There’s just something a little strange about it. The issue is ambiguity, and the way it complicates the structure and pronunciation of the name.

The big culprit here is the word post. It has not one, not two, but three meanings that are pressed into duty in this name. First there’s the meaning that makes this word a synonym of mail, which we find in the expressions post office and, of course, postcard. Then there’s the meaning that we use when we talk about posting to our blogs. Finally, there’s the meaning that we find in expressions like postmodern.

These three meanings tug us in different directions when we’re trying to combine post with secret to make sense of the name. Matters are complicated further by the fact that secret is both a noun and an adjective. We might think of the name PostSecret as being analogous to postcard, in which case secret is a noun that replaces card. We might try to think of post as a verb, but then the name would be more natural if it were PostSecrets or PostASecret or PostYourSecrets–the bare noun secret just doesn’t fit. Finally, we can think of the name as being like postmodern, in which case secret is an adjective, and the post- prefix suggests that these things are no longer ordinary secrets once they appear on the site.

When we interpret this name as being analogous to postmodern, we are likely to want place the main emphasis on the first syllable of secret. But the prevalence of compound names creates a pressure to treat this name as a compound, like postcard, and put the main emphasis on post. An internal struggle ensues.

The postmodern-like interpretation of the name is the most complex and satisfying. Just as postmodern doesn’t simply mean ‘no longer modern’, but rather describes something after modernism that incorporates and/or reacts to a modernist perspective, PostSecret seems to indicate a new type of thing made possible by the web: freely shared “secrets” that are secret only in the sense that they can’t be connected to individual people. These deep dark “secrets” take on a new life when viewed in the aggregate–patterns emerge, people’s common preoccupations are revealed, and things start to seem a little less dark, if not less deep. As the Name Inspector’s spouse says, “Well, we live in a post-secret age, don’t we?”.

Tags: postsecret, the name postsecret, secrets, art, community art, postmodern

Blog names based on authors’ names

Surprise! A lot of blogs are named after their authors, sometimes with a clever twist, sometimes not. This reflects the roots of blogs in what were essentially online diaries. The top two names in this category, Huffington Post and Daily Kos, put the authors’ names into newspaper-style titles. Others, like Michelle Malkin and Kottke.org, just use the authors’ names unadorned. Some folksy titles put the author’s first name in a simple descriptive phrase, as in Seth’s Blog or Joel on Software. Those that aspire to cleverness incorporate the author’s first or last name into into a coined title: GigaOM, Scobleizer, Automattic, etc.

Disarmingly self-deprecating blog titles

Some blog names poke fun at their authors, often by implying that they have nothing to say or are, by virtue of being bloggers instead of “real” writers/journalists/whatevers, hard to take seriously. Of course, these names are always used with a wink that says “I’m reclaiming and defiantly flaunting an epithet”, and usually have a positive spin as well. TreeHugger is a good example of that–it’s a term normally used to belittle environmentalists, but embraced by one here. Hot Air is not only what we call a certain kind of puffed-up nonsense, but can also suggest speech that is fueled by righteous anger. The name instapundit.com implies that any jerk can set up shop as a commentator on the web, but also promises up-to-the-second analysis. And, with its condescending feminine/diminutive ending, Wonkette suggests frivolity, but gives off a flirty, playful vibe appropriate for its content (plus it’s just funny).

Short, catchy content-oriented names

These coined single-word names make a pithy connection to a content niche: Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, etc. They’re a lot like the names of companies or popular magazines.

Descriptive, boring content-oriented names

Some blog names just put it on the table with a thud. Official Google Blog and The Unofficial Apple Weblog are excellent specimens of this variety.

Arty names

Some blog names have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes them kind of arty or literary sounding. Ars Technica achieves this via highfalutin’ Latin, and A List Apart makes enigmatic use of the syntactically interesting word apart (remind The Name Inspector to write about the name Six Apart one of these days).

FUN! names

Some blog names just want to have fun. Boing Boing, Explosm!

Ironic gee-whiz names

The ironic use of corny expressions of enthusiasm and praise is pervasive on the web. We see this in blog titles like Neatorama, and in blog subtitles or taglines like A Directory of Wonderful Things (Boing Boing) and home of fine hypertext products (kottke.org).

Earnest calls to action

Some blog names are achingly sincere about changing the world: Think Progress, How to Change the World, Creating Passionate Users, Jihad Watch, and NewsBusters are all good examples.

Names covered with cheese

The web can be a pretty cheesy place, and some blogs and their names wallow in it. icanhascheezburger.com, The Superficial – Because You’re Ugly, Something Awful: The Internet Makes You Stupid, and Go Fug Yourself, anyone?.

The Name Inspector is sure there are many more types of blog name to discuss, but must go convince himself that The Name Inspector does not fall into the same category as Official Google Blog.

Tags: blogs, blogging, blog names, blog naming, technorati

First, let’s consider some numbers from David Sifry’s “State of the Live Web” report from April 2007. Technorati is currently tracking more than 70 million blogs, and about 120,000 new ones were created every day during the first quarter of 2007. That means it’s really hard to come up with a blog title (and a blog) that stands out.

Vanessa has found an interesting solution to that problem. She has a blog called Vanessa Fox. Nude. which is found at www.vanessafoxnude.com. It does not feature nude photos. It does, however, draw traffic and attention. Vanessa says she doesn’t carry business cards to events like Gnomedex. “I just tell them the name of my site,” she says, “and it’s pretty memorable.” This is a kind of blog naming greatness.

But this greatness was thrust upon Vanessa. She wasn’t the first person to think of attracting web attention by linking her name to the word nude. Someone else thought it would be funny and made a site. But Vanessa says she decided, “If anyone should rank #1 for ‘vanessa fox nude’, it should be me”. So she bought the domain and blogs under it.

Like it or not, this is the world of personal branding on the web.

Tags: gnomedex, gnomedex7, gnomedex7.0, gnomedex2007, vanessa fox, vanessa fox nude, personal branding

When The Name Inspector decided to go into business, the first book he bought was Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start. Why? Well, it did get great reviews on Amazon. But another factor was the poetic title. Not only does it rhyme, but the word art is orthographically and phonetically contained in the word start. Like the slogan I like Ike, famously analyzed by Roman Jakobson, this title uses linguistic form to highlight its meaning: There’s an art in starting something. And that’s a powerful and appealing idea. The use of the expression the start, rather than startups or starting your business or something equally specific and pedestrian, promised that the book would present a kind of philosophy, which it did. The Name Inspector was not disappointed.

In addition to nuggets of wisdom that can only come from experience, the book offered the kinds of useful checklists of ideas about which it’s easy to say “I could have thought of those myself”. But the thing about such ideas is, unless you actually do think of them at just the right times, they don’t do you any good. Ideas are tools, and they need to be right at your fingertips when you need them. If you have to tighten a bolt when you’re on the road, having a wrench in the toolbox at home doesn’t help. The Art of the Start makes you feel equipped.

Guy Kawasaki’s current blog is called How to Change the World. According to Guy, that’s also the planned title of his next book. This is a deceptively simple name. It combines the kind of grandiose message that’s typical of business books with the ubiquitous instructional formula “How to …”. But that combination is kind of clever and funny. Changing the world is something for which there should be no step-by-step instructions, but here’s a blog and a book promising just that.

Because the name How to Change the World has this almost imperceptibly odd juxtaposition, the mere act of interpreting it can cause a cognitive shift. Why? Well, we know that it’s intended to say “This is going to tell you, the reader, how to change the world”. Of course, many people don’t believe that they can change the world. Such people are bound to be a little suspicious and to look for some way to reconcile their own modest activities with the idea of changing the world. The shift occurs with the realization that all action changes the world, at least in some small way. That may take some of the awesome luster away from the idea of world-changing, but it also adds a special importance and dignity to the things we actually do. It makes a person want to take work seriously and do things right.

Another interesting thing about the name How to Change the World is that its audacity and optimism, while standard fare for business books, is actually pretty surprising in the context of blogs. Blog titles tend to be ironic, self-referential, self-deprecating, obtuse, or just silly. Blog titles often say “This blog is about nothing”, because a lot of blogs are about nothing. Blog titles often say “Don’t expect too much”, because a lot of people are ambitious enough to have blogs but not ambitious enough to try to get people to read them. How to Change the World really puts it out there.

The name How to Change the World projects the same kind of personality that Guy does in his writing. It’s optimistic without being simplistic, and, with its common monosyllabic words, it’s solid and friendly.

Tags: how to change the world, kawasaki, guy kawasaki, guykawasaki, the art of the start

TechCrunch is about as hardnosed as a name can be, both in sound and in meaning. Has this helped to establish Michael Arrington as a rainmaker of Web 2.0? Who can say?

What makes this name so badass? First, there’s the no-nonsense word tech, which tells you in no uncertain terms what Mr. Arrington will be writing about. Then there are the meanings of crunch. Perhaps the most relevant is the one found in the expressions crunch numbers and crunch data. In that context crunch means something like ‘submit to rigourous, impersonal analysis’. That certainly helps to establish Arrington’s credibility as a critic of new web technologies. There’s also the expression crunch time, which implies furious hard work to meet an impending deadline, especially in the tech industry. Crunch also implies physical exertion, as in do crunches, and destruction, as in crunch, crush, smash, squash, etc. It’s all very macho. (Of course, crunch also suggests snack foods, but that’s hardly relevant here, is it?)

All this crunchiness is supported by the heavy, hard sound of this name. TechCrunch almost seems like it was invented to illustrate the principles of sound symbolism, so important to names, that are represented by the phonetic transcriptions included in these posts. It’s filled with low-sonority sounds (represented by the dark phonetic symbols) and closed syllables (shown by the way the dark symbols serve as “bookends” for each syllable). Then there’s that transition between syllables. The first syllable ends with a [k] sound and the second begins with a [k] sound. In the most natural pronunciation, the first [k] never gets released, so a person saying the name just goes reticent there for a while between syllables. Very brusque.

The name is even heavy orthographically, because there are lots of consonants, and two of them (the final sound of each syllable) are represented by the two letters “ch”. That makes the ratio of letters to syllables pretty high (5:1, in fact).

The name TechCrunch is big and heavy and not so pretty, but it’s serious and it gets the job done.

Tags: TechCrunch, the name TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, Mike Arrington, Arrington, MichaelArrington, MikeArrington