How To Select A Name For Your Personal Email Address

Anyone starting his/her journey online needs an email address.

The first time I got myself an email address was in 1998 with Yahoo mail. I entered a random name- “denharsh”. Almost 20 years later, I’m still using that same handle everywhere (Twitter, Facebook, and many other online presences)

When I started out online, I had little knowledge of the internet, and no knowledge whatsoever about branding and the importance of having a good email address.

Many of my friends have email addresses that have prefixes like “awesome”, “sweet”, “love”, and so on. Such names look good when we’re teenagers, but as we start to become professionals, having these kinds of email addresses becomes a source of embarrassment.

Name for Email address

A blogger can always a get a professional email address with something like [email protected], but for a normal user who is using a service like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo mail, selecting a decent email name is crucial.

If you are a college student or someone who is starting their professional career, now is the right time to let go of the email address which no longer serves you, and create a new one which will serve you for the next several years.

How To Choose A Name For Your Email Address:

If you are just starting to get online now and are planning on getting an email address like [email protected], it will be tough, as most of these email addresses are already taken.

The first thing you need to do is select which email service you want to use. My recommendation would be Gmail or Outlook. Gmail is great in terms of functionality, and Outlook is relatively unused (comparatively) so you can more easily get your desired email address from here.

The next step is to choose a name which doesn’t suck.

Your Name

Nothing could be better than using your name as your email address.

For example:

[email protected]
If you have a common name, chances are high that this email address is already taken. If that’s the case, you can play around with the name order and abbreviations.

For example:

AgrawalHarsh
HAgrawal
Many email service providers will let you use a few special characters like underscore (_), dashes (-), and periods (.) which can help you get your desired name.

For example:

Harsh-Agrawal
Agrawal.Harsh
H_Agrawal
Easy To Remember

Select a username which is not only easy to remember, but easy to pronounce.

Since we are dealing with a personal email address, being able to easily speak it to people will be massively helpful. Challenging pronunciations and spellings are to be avoided.

Things Not To Do While Selecting A Personal Email Address:

Don’t use any prefix or suffix (like cool, sweet, innocent, hunk, etc.) while selecting your email address.
Your email address is all about you, so don’t link your email address with the name of your boyfriend/girlfriend/dog/children/etc.
If you’re from a culture where your surname (family name) changes after marriage, try to avoid using your surname in your email address. Instead use something else which defines you like a professional title or occupation.
Whenever you are creating a new email address, think of it as your online identity. Think about how it will sound in 10-15 years. Think about what it says about who you are as a person and a professional.

I hope this quick guide will help you choose the best email address for you. If you already have an email address which doesn’t sound professional, it’s not too late to get a new one that does.

If you have any other tips, do share it with us via the comments.

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