How to Choose a Name for an Email Address

An email address says a lot about the person who owns it. Give your decision a lot of thought. You can choose slightly more colorful nicknames for personal use than business. There are very few rules on choosing an email address name. Often, someone's first impression of you is seeing your email address, so consider your email name carefully.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Use any combination of letters (upper or lower case) and numbers along with the dash (-) and underscore (_) to create a name for your email identity. The characters you are unable to use are the space ( ), diagonal (/), backslash (\), quotation marks ("), exclamation and question marks (!, ?), greater than or less than (< >). The "@" sign can only be used in the appropriate place, which is after the name you have chosen and before the domain name. An example of this would be [e-mail].

2. Make use of wording that will not embarrass you. Many people go with names and/or initials. In this case, John Smith would use one of these for his Hotmail account: [e-mail] or [e-mail]. This name format works well for business or personal email.

3. Draw on some form of your name for a business email. It could be first name only, last name only, a combination of both, or select letters of each name to form an abbreviated name. Working at Wholesale Auto, you might try using [e-mail] or [e-mail]. Business email addresses are a part of your personal marketing plan-use them wisely.

4. Fall back on different names for personal emails. In other ways, they can be a little more fun. If you have a hobby, you might want to use it. Someone who surfs the Internet all day and night and has an MSN email address could easily use [e-mail].

5. Notice that some people get creative with their email addresses. A young lady might use something like [e-mail]. Her idea being she is only 23 years old and she is a blond-haired woman. A young man who is into surfing might decide to use [e-mail]. This would show his love of the sport.

6. Choose an email name that you will remember so that when you give it out, you will give the right spelling. The email that was sent to you will not find you otherwise.

Tips & Warnings

• You can usually use more than one email address for personal use. This way, you can have different names for different activities or levels of professionalism.
• If you really don't like the name you choose, or you are receiving too much junk mail, then just change your email name and start all over again.
• Suggestive names will turn off some people. Do not bring such an email address into play when leaving your email address for a prospective employer to use.

[Gavriela]

on 10/29/2009 This article seemed potentially useful and informative for newcomers to email. It was written in a lively style, with attention to clarity of meaning and accepted English usage.

A few of the suggestions given seemed slightly dubious:

(1) Some would question the wisdom of using a potentially off-putting descriptor (e.g., "blondchick" or "surferdude") even in personal, sociable email. Why encourage anyone to add to the glut of immature and annoying email "handles"?

(2) Yes, it is good to remember your email address, if only so you can access your own email. But it is generally unneccessary to remember your address when you want to give it to someone else -- at least if you are sending it to the person via email -- since most email programs have automated this process.

One final if minor point: The author mistakenly identified a "one-en" hyphen (-) as a dash.