Choosing the name people will type
Your address is one word that gets read aloud, written on a card, and typed by somebody who heard it once. Most of the work is choosing it, not designing the page behind it.
Three ways a name gets used
Before anything else, picture the name in three situations. Someone reads it aloud in a video. Someone writes it on the back of a card in a hurry. Someone hears it once at a party and types it into a phone the next morning. A name that survives all three is a good name; one that only looks good in a header is not.
The failures are nearly always the same handful of things. Doubled letters disappear in speech — nobody hears the second one. Digits turn into a question: is it 4 or four, 2 or to? A hyphen has to be dictated, and half the people you dictate it to will type an underscore instead. Words with two accepted spellings force the listener to guess.
- Short enough to say in one breath, and to read off a passing van.
- No doubled letters, unless you are prepared to say “with two n” every single time.
- No digits that could be heard as words.
- No hyphens if you can avoid them; one at most if you cannot.
- One spelling only. If you have to spell it out letter by letter, it is costing you visitors.
The name you already answer to
If you have used the same handle on Instagram for four years, that handle is already the answer. Consistency beats a marginally better-sounding alternative, because a matching name means people can guess your address straight from your profile and reach the page without a link at all.
The exception is a handle you never really chose — one carrying a stray underscore, a birth year, or the leftovers of a name that was taken. Those are worth abandoning while your audience is still small. The cost of an inconsistent name grows with every place it gets printed.
Your name or the project’s
A personal name never expires. You may stop cutting hair, stop shooting weddings, stop writing about running — your own name still fits. A project name is stronger while the project lasts and awkward the moment you outgrow it. Photographers who registered something with “photo” in it and then moved into video know how this ends.
The honest rule: if the work is you, use your name. If the work is a business with a sign, a team and an address, use the business name. If both are true, take both — an account holds up to ten pages, each with its own address.
| Test | annakravets | anna-photo-kyiv | kravets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spelling it over the phone | One word, spelled once | Three words and two hyphens to dictate | Short, but usually taken already |
| On a business card | Fits on one line | Wraps, or shrinks the type | Fits anywhere |
| Ageing well | Survives a change of craft | Breaks on a move or a change of genre | Survives everything |
None of the three shapes is wrong. The point is that the trade-offs are knowable in advance, and they are not aesthetic ones.
What changing it later costs
A rename looks free and is not. The cards are printed. The link sits in other people’s posts, in a directory listing you have forgotten about, in a message thread somebody will scroll back to next year. Your own pinned post has it. A sticker in a shop window has it, and nobody is going to peel that off.
Two things soften the blow. A rename keeps the old address redirecting to the new one, so printed links go on working. And a name you release stays parked instead of returning to circulation, which means an old card never delivers a customer to a stranger’s page. Neither makes a rename free; together they make it survivable.
Before you claim it
- Say it out loud to someone and ask them to type what they heard.
- Write it on paper. Look at how long the line turned out.
- Read the whole address, service name included, and listen for accidental words at the join.
- Search for it. Make sure it is not already a business in your city.
- Ask whether it still fits if the work changes in three years.
- Check the handle is free on the platforms you actually use, not on all of them.
Then claim it and stop deliberating. A merely good name used consistently for five years beats a perfect one you keep revising.