So I’m trying to decide on a name for a new website. This website is going to be the front door for my freelance web design projects. I want to be able to tell people to drop by this place if they’re curious to see what I’ve designed. Since I hope to be catering to creative Hollywood actors and photographers and such, I want something that’s simple and cool and, perhaps, a little cute.

Pondering this yesterday, I immediately think of bluebunny.com. It just jumps into my head and starts twitching its nose. I like it. I can already picture a spare, white web page with a single blue rabbit in the corner. Blue Bunny. That’s cute. I can imagine the conversation:

“I love your website! Who designed it?”

“Blue Bunny Design.”

“That’s so cute!”

But of course. bluebunny.com is taken. So is bluerabbit.com. I try greenbunny.com. redbunny.com. purplebunny.com. Taken. Taken. Taken. I do like the bunny thing, because I’ve always had this thing where I blame all the ills of the world on the Nefarious Black Bunnies of Doom and I’d like to invent a slightler nicer version of the species. Bunnies, however, prove to be popular on the web. So I try another animal, still thinking about the cool color idea. Colored animals. That’s gonna be my “thing.”

Cats are cool. I try bluecat.com. Taken, of course. Along with bluecat.net, bluecat.org, bluecat.info and yes, bluecat.biz. bluekitty? Taken. azurekitty? Taken. cobaltkitty? Available, actually, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it:

“I love your website! Who designed it?”

“Cobalt Kitty Design.”

“Oh.”

“Kitten” has the same problem. Kittens of every color exist on the web. But I do notice that blueberrykitty.com is available. So it jetkitty.com (“jet,” as in “black,” but with a cool “rocket” connotation.)

Briefly I try “puppy” but I guess I’m just not as into puppies as I am bunnies or kittens because I can’t get sickpuppy.com out of my head.

Later, I bring this up to some of my co-workers and get them thinking about it.

“Would you rather patronize a designer whose site was “littleblackbunny.com” or “blueberrykitty.com?” The question is met with immediate gagging all around. And for good reason. I don’t want this to be a cute-fest. That’s why bluecat.com would have been so cool. So then this exchange occurs:

Kirk: (improvising) What about… cat… tendon?

Me: cattendon.com?

Kirk: Believe me, it’s better than blueberrykitty.

He’s actually right. But then my little scene becomes:

“I love your website! Who designed it?”

“Cat Tendon Design.”

[projectile barf]

We keep going, inventing stuff on the fly. From cattendon.com we manage to get to kittygristle.com. Kitty Gristle. We laugh and laugh at first, but then we start repeating it and you know what? It’s kinda catchy. I start asking around. Test audiences like kittygristle.com a lot. “A little something for the girls and a little something for the boys.” I have reservations. I DO like the rhythm of the words so we try a few variations. kittythistle.com comes up. So does kittymissile.com, which I rather like (sort of like jetcat.com) kittyshizzle.com comes up, but I veto that one pretty quick.

kittygristle.com

That’s what people like. Kirk even draws a cartoony kitten in a frying pan and tells me it’s the logo for kittygristle.com. So if I go that way I already have some key art.

The jury’s still out. Other possibilities have come up. deepbluecat.com is available. I like that. And “indigo” is under-used in the animal kingdom, so indgobunny.com is available. And I’ve been playing with things other than colors today. concretekitten.com has popped up in my head once or twice (concretekitty.com is not available.) shadowbunny.com is taken, as is darkbunny.com, so those are out.

What do you think? Would you ask a guy who ran kittygristle.com to design a web page for you? What are alternatives? Any good synonyms for “blue” that I haven’t thought of (I’ve thought of a lot.)