Virtually every dictionary word in English is taken. Most 3, 4 and 5 letters words are also taken. What do you do when you’re trying to think of ideas for a domain name that has some relevant meaning, is easy (enough) to remember and can be purchased for less than $20? Here are 6 sources of inspiration.
1. Visit Urban Dictionary
http://www.urbandictionary.com/popular.php?character=A
- Look for inspiration in the A to Z listings for popular words
- Click for random words
- Browse through the Word of the day listings
2. Word lists
Word Twist – 3 letter words
http://www.wordtwist.org/words3.php
- Add a couple of three-letter words together
- Use one before or after another word
Scrabble – 4 letter words
http://www.scrabble.org.au/words/fours.htm
- No meanings here – just pure word goodness. Scan through and see what tickles your fancy.
WV Scrabble – uncommon 4-letter words
http://www.wvscrabble.com/downloads/wordlists/uncommon_4s.pdf
- Another source in a printable format.
Pentagrams 5 letter words
http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/datasets/words/pentagram.html
“…includes geographic and personal names, plurals, slang, dialect, technical terms, and acronyms, as well as obscene, objectionable, obscure and obsolete words, and words that have not been uttered in a century…”
3. Squad Help
- Start a domain name content and get 100’s of suggestions within days. If you don’t want to start your own competition – you might like some of the suggestions for other people’s competitions. The suggestions are usually available and if you are quick you can register them first.
- You can also enter a competition and win some cash, often $50. Simply add your suggestions and wait to see if you are the winner.
4. Name Station
http://www.namestation.com/default.aspx
- Create random names using a keyword. Choose the minimum and maximum length. Shows only domain names that are available.
5. Nameboy
- Nameboy has been called the ultimate domain name generator, website name generator and the best way to search domain names.
6. Domain Pigeon
- Domain Pigeon lists available domain and Twitter names. Not only is a good domain name hard to find, so too are good twitter names.
“…With about 10 million people already using Twitter and thousands more signing up every day, the number of great Twitter names is shrinking rapidly.”
- As at 1 July Domain Pigeon had 14,346 five-letter domain names and 37,135 three, four and five-letter Twitter names listed as available.
Bonus Website Suggestion
= blog + urbs
City-like. From the Latin word “urbs”, which means “city”.
More Suggestions
Feel free to share your ideas for creating a unique domain name.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
The urban directory is a good one. The thing that I have a hard time with is finding a name that will be catchy and stick with people just by hearing it once. I have also tried name boy but I am not very familiar with the rest of them. Thanks for the great resources I will have to check them out.
nice list
i also like the domain name generator provided by bustaname
I’ve read a lot of posts regarding coming up with a name for your site and this one is by far the most helpful because you’ve suggested tools that can be used and not just principles. Thank you for sharing. Will definitely be bookmarking this post of yours.
Most of the battle is tuning into your creative muse – then you just need good tools to check if the domain name is available and roll on from there.
You could also made up words that start with popular word but end with -ish or -er or something else ;)
That’s the style. Just proper combination of words with a little bit of spice is awesome.
Hey, you use very good resources for inspiration for your domain name but i find that google aswords helps a significant amount as it shows what people are searching for in a particular niche which is extremely useful then base your domain name around a few keywords :) nice post thanks
nice to see this, coming up with my domain name was a very difficult task for me, and i ended up picking one which was not the best for my niche, but i guess i am trying to make the best out of it. I wish i had seen your blog or a similar one earlier though!
Haha – the urban dictionary is an excellent suggestion. I find it very frustrating that nearly all words in the english dictionary are taken and an article like this for those struggling to find a decent domain name, was well needed. Bravo.
Nice. Now I am wondering why did I spend almost a week trying to figure out a good domain name for my hobby site. Wish I found this article sooner. Thanks for the tips Somone!
Good domain name can be a good reference for Search Engine Robot. Good reference for Search Engine Robot can push up our domain rank. Good rank can be a good traffic. And Good traffic can be a good monetize :D So, the point is your domain name is important :) Thanks for sharing this article. Really helpful posting :)
Hey this http://www.nameboy.com is awesome! Thanks :). Going to my bookmarks. I always think about my new domain on my own, but this is great and it will help me. Never thought that there are domain name generators.
Hi Somone.
Thank you for sharing this. I hope my name “zezebel” is something worth it to be a domain name.
It’s available as at 1 August according to GoDaddy, but you’re not the only Zezebel ;-) Spend the $12 and grab it while you can. At least jump over to WordPress – better than blogspot in my opinion.
This one is really helpful and you really come up with fun informative topic, coming up with my domain name was a very though task for me and good thing you really come up with great article for this. I hope I can see some of those samples that had been used some of this techniques.
Urban dictionary is a good one because they often have the latest “in” words and the latest street words that are very popular.
Oh, I checked out Nameboy and I agree that it’s the best! I’ve been using a different site to look for available domains but this is by far the best and easiest.
Great to hear that so many people think nameboy is a great tool.
a good domain name is really really hard to get, almost every name that I like has already been taken.
COOL stuff here! An article for those struggling to find a decent domain name. I was well informed. Thanks for posting! :-)
Another domain name generator is http://www.dombuddy.com. It’s a free online generator that comes with a Mac/Win desktop client.
Yes all premium, one or even two words domains are taken already, but even now there are many 3 word domains of a decent quality left. All someone one needs to do is type a word in yahoo domains and get plenty of suggestions.
Another approach you could take is to try a random word generator such as http://creativitygames.net/generator
I would generate 5 or so random words move them about, rearrange them into random pairs etc and see what thoughts come to mind. You may not use the words exactly but they may inspire a new idea that turns out to be awesome.
Sounds like a great idea. Your site sure does look interesting…A stable diet of zebra and other monochromatic mammals?!! Your readers are also ‘unique’. As a fellow creative mind I will stay tuned.