Your handle doesn't matter
Action matters more than aspiration
Labels can easily keep us stuck in the mindset of this is who I am, and so this is who I will continue to be.
–Jessica Fern, Polysecure
What’s the perfect name for your brand, business, podcast, newsletter, or creative project? There isn’t one. So pick something and start creating. Your handle doesn’t matter.
There is no best name. You can borrow your family’s name (Heinz, Disney) or steal one from fiction (Starbucks, Yahoo). You can twist the dough of an existing word (Google, Tumblr) or bake new ones (Xfinity, Verizon). You can use something stupid like Facebook or Lawdingo. Success and nomenclature are superficially intertwined.
Don’t expend precious energy finding the “perfect” name. Just make it edible. Use your energy to create instead. A name is good enough if it’s yours and it makes sense.
Heck, it doesn’t even need to “make sense.” Slack means “shirk” and they make tools for work. No one at Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing (3M) has touched a shovel for a century. Everything becomes Jessica eventually.
This is one of the traps of identity: that the label on the jar defines what's inside, when at most it can describe what’s inside. Like all words, a label is merely a clue. A pointer. A good enough name might inspire action but you still have to do the work. Fix first, then rename.
Action matters more than aspiration. Let meaning emerge from the work, not the label, because you can’t summed up in a word.