Naming things is hard

Jhey and I have been going back and forth on naming our CSS project and I am once again reminded how terribly hard it is to name things. You want something that stands out, but when you go to research what's available from a branding perspective, the prospects are grim.

We initially landed on The Cascade and created a newsletter sign up page, but about 10 others have had the same name idea so we went back to the drawing board and...plainly put, it's hard.

I've been feeling wistful for the days of old when I was writing content for my blog The Hermes Homestead, which is still alive and kicking but the name doesn't feel relevant to me and my path anymore so I've been noodling on names.

I want to poke my eyes out.

Many of the lifestyle bloggers I look to all use their name, but then I get into this murky area of tech content and my tech career and my book and how does it all tie together with me in this other area of things not related to tech? How can I tied in being from Seattle but being abroad and being an expat/immigrant? The questions are endless. I'm also going through this with my Etsy shop right now. Do I keep the name with sentimental meaning or do I switch it up?

And then all I can think of are the countless code names for projects in my past careers and the jokes about names and naming things. How terrible it is to try and name things. One of my favorite projects webhint.io went through 3 name changes after we launched.

And let's not even talk about deciding on a name and then going to buy a URL for your thing. An experience fraught with anxiety and frustration that usually leads to buying a URL I will later abandon in place of another, better URL.

So yeah, naming thing is hard.