Or how my blog got its name.

 Dear Mr. Shakespeare you seem to have got it all wrong. A rose by any other name just doesn’t smell as sweet. Indeed, poor Juliet tried to argue that it really made no difference whether Romeo was a Montague or not because her love for him would remain the same.

However, there is a lot in a name. After all a name can make or break a blog.

The top most tip on every blog adviser’s list is to choose the right name.

In the beginning there was…….

The name should be witty and pretty and say everything that there is to say about the blog. I mean you’re hardly likely to visit a blog named 5 Spice if you wanted to find out more about the weather!! So I named my first blog Penelope Potty Snooper because my girls used to consider me a mother who looked into their potty to see what they were up to. ( Yuck!)

But that name was so clever that no one got it but them.

Then it became…..

ChowMiaow which I thought was very clever – the word was a pun on Chow ( Food ) and Miaow ( Gossip ) which was the focus of the blog. It also meant “something to nibble on” in my native language Marathi. But then again, very few people got it. Also, according to my daughters it sounded like a website for dog/cat food, so I changed the name yet again.

ANd

Then I changed it to a blog of my own name which again was a bad idea. After all , I was a nobody with no name and no fame. So who the hell cared what I had to say? But then on the other hand, wasn’t Ariana Huffington a nobody before she became a somebody? However, that argument didn’t cut any ice so I decided to call my blog “Mumbai Daily” till I discovered that someone from Mumbai already used that name for his photo blog.

Finally

I decided on “Mumbai On A High” because I live in a really tall building and thought that this would be another clever title – playing on the fact that I lived in a flat so high up. But sadly, the buildings around me are now slowly dwarfing my building so perhaps I will have to change the name all over again.

Word association

But to get back to the original point, names are very important and have strong associations. For instance, no one will ever think kindly of a blog called “Hitler’s World” but on the other hand a name like “Candy Kisses” would be better received, won’t it?

So be careful when you name your blog. Choose a name that

• Closely describes your blog
• Is catchy and easy to remember
• Is universally appealing