What's in a name?

Keep those prize-draw entries coming, still plenty of time to win Scandinavia's finest!

Today's post is a question that's only for bloggers, I'm afraid. I love all you folk who visit without your own blogs, but I want to ask a question to bloggers, about their blog names... how did you choose it??

I guess in a lot of cases it will be obvious what the name means, but I'm interested in how you chose that particular way of naming your blog, and which alternatives you considered first.

Back in 2007 when I was rooting around for a name to attach to my blog, I hit upon 'Stuck in a Book' quite quickly. My criteria were - something with 'book' or 'reading' in the title, to make it obvious what my blog was about; and something beginning with 'S'. That might sound a little silly, but because my name (Simon) begins with 'S', it would have felt funny to be called something which didn't...

And then I had a bit of difficulty, because somebody had already taken stuckinabook.blogspot.com (for an inactive blog which has now disappeared, grr!) hence the addition of hyphens. I did think that people would always forget the hyphens, and end up at Mysterious Blog of Inactivity, but thankfully you're all cleverer than that. Unless there are legions of dissatisfied people coming up against a 'This Blog Has Been Removed' wall...

Perhaps I should mention my favourite blog name. Well, you're all great of course - but the favourite name I've come across so far is... *drum roll please* makedoandread! What an accolade to win. I just love how evocative of the blog it is - the (belated) wartime spirit, the reading priority, the humour. Wonderful.

So, over to you. Why did you choose your blog title, and which other ideas did you discard? And for those of you with obvious blog-name provenance (I'm looking at you, Harriet Devine's Blog, as my example!) what made you choose your name rather than an alias?

I'm hoping for lots of interesting answers - fire away!