Personal Domain with First Name - what prefix to use?

[trussrod]

Hello,

What prefix do you use with your personal domains?

I have some domains and I feel kinda OCD with the repetition.. what do you do in these cases:

• john@johndoe.tld
• john@john.tld

[JeremyNicoll]

I don't have personally-named domains at all - but I do have domains that I own which don't involve my name.

I use hundreds of different addresses at those domains, so the lefthand part usually has some sort of connection to the place I'm sending the email to. I have a system for assigning email addresses, indicating if they're eg just for registering with websites, mails to personal friends, mails to family members, local businesses, banks, local government, national government ... and so on. It means eg that just one filter rule can identify any reply arriving from any family member.

Even throwaway addresses have a theme in their names, which also include the date I first used them. It's therefore easy to see when something likely to be spam arrives if it is to an address used only once for real, eg 8 years ago... I /could/ block such things at the server, but am thinking about revising the naming I use for these so that every January I could update the on-server rules and lose another year's worth of replies to old addresses ... but it's hassle. I also don't want a new naming scheme to be so obvious that spammers can invent valid values that equate to future dates.

[Berenburger]

Read this thread.

[TenFour]

Quoting myself from that old thread:

In general, the shorter the better. I prefer something friendly like firstname@12345.com. If possible, get a four- or five-letter domain that is easy to spell and remember, and only use .com, .net, or .org. The best is .com. Most of the others have worse deliverability and cause errors. Even if it isn't .com people will enter .com by mistake. In general, the longer your address the more often it will get entered incorrectly and cause lost messages. I collect email addresses for a nonprofit and it is frustrating how often we find email addresses entered incorrectly the first time. If you just use firstname@12345.com it sounds friendly and not intimidating, and if you have it set up correctly they will see your full name in the email header.

The #1 factor with a professional email address is to sound like a real person reaching out. I think using your real first name does that.

Having written all this, I see every variation of email from all types of professionals every day. I am amazed how many "professionals" use some rinky dink yahoo or aol address they set up in high school, or a professional that shares an email with his wife and family. Don't do it!

Don't use your family name as part of the address unless it is easy to spell and common enough that people will know how to spell it, or else 75% of people will make mistakes entering it. I know because my family name is not common, even though I consider it very easy to spell--it is two common words together. However, it is entered incorrectly by others probably 90% of the time.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by TenFour

my family name is not common, even though I consider it very easy to spell--it is two common words together. .

ten four ??

[TenFour]

ten four ??

Ha! Something a little longer than that, but similar idea using two common words together. Amazing how often it is entered incorrectly by people. The problem using uncommon family names and email errors have caused us huge hassles at times. An aged relative lost her social security card, which required a visit to the SS office in another city with her along with tons of identification to prove who she was. Well the agent entering everything made several critical typing errors that meant she was still unable to use her SS account, wasn't receiving checks, and could no longer log in via the web interface, and eventually it required another trip back to the office to fix her account.

[Gankaku]

It is kind of repetitive and kind of weird huh. I was lucky to get my lastname.us. So I just use firstname@mylastname.us. It works pretty nicely.

You can also pick some other tld you like that doesn't have anything to do with your last name. Then you can be firstname or firstnamelastname@your_own_domain.com. I'd rather do that then firstname@firstnamelastname.com. But it's preference. Some people probably don't care. I'd say most people don't! In the end, as long as the email gets there, and you're using professional types of domains on resumes and stuff, then it's all good.

[TenFour]

There's probably some additional privacy and security by not using your actual family name in an email address you use universally for many things. Makes it a little bit harder for the bad guys to tie your information together. But, it does make sense for business purposes, applying for jobs, etc.

[FredOnline]

Originally Posted by TenFour

The problem using uncommon family names and email errors have caused us huge hassles at times.

I also have an uncommon last name, and so have been able to register several TLD (com/net) domain names:

lastname.tld
firstnamelastname.tld

I've also had the hassle of the misspelling of my last name, which included flight tickets, hotel reservations, and most recently the car registration document for my latest vehicle!

Originally Posted by TenFour

There's probably some additional privacy and security by not using your actual family name in an email address you use universally for many things.

For the majority of my e-mail correspondence, I have registered an easy to spell and remember domain name, and find that works well.