rss feed
A Rose By Any Other Name
I had a nickname at school; nothing insulting, embarrassing or derogatory, it was actually quite cute for a seven year old (which was around the time it started). But I’m not going to state that name here for fear of inadvertently resurrecting a meme that has taken so long to die. Even now, well entrenched as I am into my “middle years”, father of two, respectable professional etc, my Facebook wall (hey, remember when we all used Facebook) is regularly peppered with messages addressed to a name invented by children in a playground circa 1979.
Not that I mind, it’s kinda sweet really, but you have to be so careful with names, as the good ones tend to stick like tattoos. And now I have a second nickname, one which embarrassingly I have to take the blame for creating myself (is there anything less cool than the kid at school who made up their own nickname?). Sometime in 2000 I decided “zenbullets” would be a catchy little title for my homepage (hey, remember when we all had homepages). I’d lifted it from an issue of The Invisibles, which I was obsessed with throughout the last half of the nineties. But had I known that, 10 years later, I would be still be trading as zenbullets I might have given it a little more than a few minutes thought.
Personal branding is actually quite important in the crowded marketplace of the web, so there is a lot of value to having a memorable (and more importantly – unique) name. I could have done worse, and I don’t cringe too badly at it, but still I wonder if I can ever discard it now. I am well known, especially in Flash circles, by this moniker, and relatively unknown by my real name (which has it’s advantages too). So should I shed the name now, or just resign myself to being associated with a throwaway line in a comic book when I am in my seventies.
Of course, before I can shed one name means I first have to think up a better name to replace it. Which is an even more daunting task.
Tweet
March 25th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I often think the same thing about our company name. Thought it up almost as a joke but it stuck (probably for want of a better idea). It seems commercially suicidal to rename our company now. It’s sort of like how people don’t like the sound of their own voice when they hear it recorded. I think you should keep your name as people often interpret it differently to you. As you say, being unique is really the key so people can easily build a stack of memories on top of it. I think as the stack gets heavier it gets harder to remove things from the bottom. Apologies for the terrible metaphors!