How to Name Your Blog: We Checked 115 Generator Names and 61% Were Taken

Every generator result, domain check and price on this page was recorded on 30 October 2026. Prices are Porkbun’s US dollar prices from that day unless we say otherwise.

Short answer: write a long list of words your readers already use and combine them into names you can say out loud and spell after one hearing. Then check each survivor for three things: a .com or .co.uk at the standard price, no clashing trade mark, and free social handles. Blog name generators help with the list. They do not solve availability. We gave six free generators from Google’s first page the same two seeds and checked all 115 suggestions at one registrar. Only 45 (39%) had a .com you could register at the normal price. The rest were taken, and 27 were on resale, asking up to $91,599.

We gave six blog name generators the same seeds

Most advice on naming a blog ends with “try a generator, then check the domain”. We wanted to know how often that second step fails, so we ran the test ourselves.

On 30 October 2026 we searched google.co.uk for “blog name generator” and opened every free web tool on page one. We fixed two seeds before starting: “travel” and “budget cooking”. Each tool got exactly those words, and we recorded the first ten names it showed for each seed. Then we checked the .com version of every name in Porkbun’s bulk search the same afternoon. As a second check, we looked up every .com in Verisign’s public registry database (RDAP). The two sources agreed on all 111 distinct domains.

Two page-one tools could not be tested. Canva asked us to log in or sign up before it would generate anything, and name-generator.org.uk asks for adjectives, verbs and your real name, with no box for a topic. A Chrome extension also ranked, but it is not a web tool. That left six generators and 115 suggestions. Wix showed nine names per seed and Themeisle showed seven for “travel”.

“Taken” means the .com was registered and Porkbun showed no resale listing. “On resale” means it was registered and listed by a domain marketplace at an asking price, before any transfer fee. Every .com that was free cost $11.08 for the first year and $11.08 to renew. None of the free names carried a premium price.

What the 115 suggestions tell you about naming a blog

Three patterns came out of the data. Each one changes how you should use a generator.

Short real-word names are almost all gone

We split the 98 names from the five tools that suggest names (Themeisle suggests domain strings, so we left it out). We counted words as written, so a joined name like TravelSaga is one word and an ampersand counts as a word. One-word names like Savor, Wander and TravelSaga had a free .com 5 times out of 41. Two-word names managed 9 out of 34. Names of three words or more, such as The Wayfarer’s Map or Supper for Less, had a free .com 16 times out of 23.

So the short names that sound most like a brand are usually already bought, often years ago. Wander.com was first registered in 1997, according to the registry, while voyagement.com was registered in June 2026. Short is easier to remember and long is easier to register, and you have to trade one against the other. If you want a short name, expect to invent a word or pay a reseller.

The narrower seed did better

“Travel” is a crowded seed. Only 16 of its 56 suggestions (29%) had a free .com. “Budget cooking” did better, with 29 of 59 (49%). Two seeds cannot prove a rule, but one likely reason is that a narrower topic gives the generator rarer words to combine, and rarer words are less likely to be registered already. Picking a specific blog niche first may make the naming step easier.

Generators hand the same names to different people

Three separate tools (Wix, Squarespace and Namelix) suggested Frugal Feast for “budget cooking”. The .com was first registered on 31 March 2026. The plural, frugalfeasts.com, was registered on 20 June 2026 and was listed for resale at $499 on the day we checked. Squarespace and Namelix both suggested Budget Bites, whose .com has existed since 2004.

Ten of the 67 registered .com names in our sample were first registered during 2026. Two were registered in October: travelstorm.com on 18 October and overroam.com on 26 October, four days before our test. We cannot tell who registered them or why. What the dates do show is that a generator’s suggestion can be fresh to you and already claimed by someone else.

Do generators run by domain sellers do better?

We expected the tools owned by companies that sell domains to steer you towards names you can buy. The opposite happened in our sample. Wix and Squarespace together produced 7 free .com names out of 38 (18%). The four other tools produced 38 out of 77 (49%). Leave out Themeisle, which only shows available strings, and the other three still reached 23 out of 60 (38%). Both groups are small, so read this as a pattern worth knowing, not a ranking that will hold every day.

Wix’s flow explains part of it. It generates names first and domains second. For 17 of its 18 names the exact .com was gone, and Wix offered variants in its place: voyage-ment.com, thevoyagement.com and voyagement.co.uk for “Voyagement”, for example. Its domain list was honest. It never offered an exact .com that Porkbun showed as taken. But a hyphen or an added “the” makes a name harder to pass on by word of mouth. Wix also listed voyagement.co.uk at £3.62 a year, free for the first year with an annual website plan, and voyagement.ai at £118.27 a year (£75.95 as an introductory offer).

When a generator says a name is available

Three of the six tools made availability claims we could test against the registrar. Wix’s domain list is covered above. The other two made explicit claims.

• Namelix puts a green “.com” tick on names whose .com it thinks is free. All 7 ticked names were free at Porkbun. It also showed two domains “for sale” with prices. BudgetHQ.com matched Porkbun’s $2,299 resale listing exactly. Overroam.com was shown at $1,395, but Porkbun showed it as taken with no listing, and the registry dated its registration to 26 October.
• Themeisle says it excludes unavailable domains, and its seven .com suggestions were all free. It gets there by building strings like onebudgetcookinglive.net and getluxurytourclub.com. Two suggestions began with “ibis”, and one of them was ibisbudget-cooking.net. The UK Intellectual Property Office lists “ibis budget HOTELS” as a registered trade mark owned by ACCOR (UK00801094915, classes 35 and 43), and ibis budget appears as a hotel brand on Accor’s website. A free domain is no use if the name inside it belongs to someone else.

One more thing we noticed. When we pressed Themeisle’s search button, our original tab moved to a Hostinger page carrying an affiliate tag and a “THEMEISLE” coupon, while the results opened in a new tab. That is how this free tool earns money. You should know it happens.

How to name your blog: a seven-step method

This is the process we would follow for a new blog today. It takes about an hour, and most of that is checking.

1. Write one sentence about the blog. Say who it is for and what they will get, such as “cheap weeknight dinners for students”. The words in that sentence are your raw material.
2. Make a list of 30 words. Include words your readers use, verbs from the topic, places, objects and a few unrelated words you like. Run your sentence through two or three generators and add anything good. Our free blog name ideas page has starter lists by niche.
3. Combine and cut to ten. Pair words, add “the”, try alliteration. Drop anything that only makes sense in writing, anything with a negative meaning or an unfortunate second reading, and trendy words that will date quickly.
4. Run the phone test. Say each name to someone without showing it. If they cannot type it correctly after one hearing, cut it. This removes clever spellings, doubled letters at word joins and names that need a hyphen.
5. Check the domains in one go. Paste all ten into one registrar’s bulk search, as .com and .co.uk. Note three prices for each: first year, renewal and any resale listing.
6. Search the trade mark registers. Use the UK IPO’s free search by keyword and the USPTO’s Trademark Search. The UK search defaults to “similar” matches, which is what you want. A live mark in a related class is a reason to move on.
7. Check the handles you will actually use. Visit each platform’s profile address with the name in it. On 30 October, youtube.com/@frugalfeast already belonged to a channel called Frugal Feast. The handles for Eat Thrifty, Cook Thrift and The Wayfarer’s Map returned YouTube’s “404 Not Found” page.

Steps five to seven are where generator names fail most. Do them before you fall in love with a name. Once a name passes, the next job is a logo, and our guide to making a blog logo covers seven methods for non-designers.

Score your shortlist out of ten

Once you have three or four names that pass the checks, score them. Give each line 0, 1 or 2 points. A name scoring 8 or more is ready to register. A name below 6 is likely to cost you later, in money or in readers who cannot find you.

Run the scorecard on Frugal Feast and it fails on two lines: the .com is registered (and the plural is on resale), and the YouTube handle is in use. Its UK trade mark search came back clear, and we did not check the .co.uk. The Thrifty Skillet, from Ryan Robinson’s tool, had a free .com on our test day. It would still need its trade mark and handle checks before it scored well.

Keyword names or brand names

A keyword name, such as Budget Cooking Tips, tells readers and search engines the topic at a glance. The cost is flexibility. If you later add travel or parenting posts, the name works against you. Keyword names are also easy for other sites to copy, because they are built from the words everyone in the niche already uses.

A brand name, such as The Thrifty Skillet, is easier to own and to protect. It needs a tagline or a clear homepage to explain itself at first. For most new blogs, a short brand name with one topic word in it is a sound middle ground. “Skillet” places The Thrifty Skillet in cooking without boxing it into one diet.

A keyword in the name will not do the ranking work for you. What brings readers is what you publish under it, and the headlines you write for it; our list of powerful headline words helps there. Our guide to starting a blog covers the rest. If you plan to earn from the blog, read how to make money blogging before you settle on a name. A name that boxes you into one topic can limit what you sell later.

.co.uk or .com for a UK blog?

Nominet runs the .uk domains. Its UK Registration Policy describes the .uk zone as “intended to be used for those who wish to be associated with the United Kingdom”. It describes .co.uk as intended for commercial purposes. Both are advisory, and the policy sets no UK address requirement for either one. Its registration terms say names are normally registered for two years, and registrars can register them for one to ten years. You must keep your contact details accurate.

Two practical points follow. First, .co.uk and .uk are separate domains. The old right for .co.uk owners to claim the matching .uk expired on 25 June 2019, so somebody else may hold the shorter version of your name. Check both. Second, .me.uk is limited to individuals, which suits a personal blog under your own name.

Our rule of thumb: if your readers are mostly in the UK and you have no plans to sell abroad, a .co.uk is a perfectly good home. If you want readers anywhere, try for the .com. Where both are free at standard price, register both and point one at the other. On our test day, Porkbun charged $5.66 a year for a .co.uk and $11.08 for a .com, with renewals at the same prices.

The renewal price trap

Many domain endings are sold cheaply for the first year and renew at a much higher price. This is where a “cheap” name gets expensive. Here are the prices Porkbun showed for one test name, thewayfarersmap, on 30 October 2026.

The pattern holds at other registrars too. Our Namecheap review records a .com that renews at about $14.78 after a cheaper first year. Before you register, add the first-year price to four years of renewals. That is roughly what the name costs you over five years. Our guide to buying a domain name walks through checkout, and the pricing hub tracks what hosting and tools cost over time.

Is my blog name available? A five-minute check

If you already have a favourite, you can answer this quickly.

• Type the .com and .co.uk into one registrar’s search. “Taken” with an “Inquire” or “Make offer” button means somebody owns it.
• If the registrar shows a price in the thousands, that is a resale listing. In our sample the asking prices, before transfer fees, ran from $499 to $91,599, and the median of the 24 priced listings was $8,249.
• Search the exact name in quotes on Google to see whether another blog or business already uses it.
• Run the UK IPO and USPTO searches described above.
• Open the profile address on each social platform you plan to use.

If the name fails one check, change one word and run the list again. Do not skip a step because a generator said “available”. In our test, the generators that made claims were mostly right about the domain, but none of them checked trade marks or handles.

Frequently asked questions

Short answers, drawn from the test and the method above.

How do I come up with a blog name?

Write one sentence describing the blog and its readers, then build a list of about 30 words from it and from your topic. Combine them into names, cut any that fail the phone test, and check the survivors for a domain, trade marks and handles.

Are blog name generators worth using?

They are useful for raw ideas. In our test of six page-one generators, only 39% of 115 suggestions had a .com you could register at the standard price. Use them for words, then do your own checks.

Does a keyword in my blog name help it rank?

Not on its own. Rankings come from what you publish and who links to it. A keyword can still help readers place the blog at a glance, so one topic word in a short brand name is a sensible compromise.

How do I check if my blog name is available?

Search the .com and .co.uk at a registrar, search the UK IPO and USPTO trade mark registers, search the exact name on Google and visit the social profile addresses you want. A name is only available if it passes all of them.

Should a UK blogger choose .co.uk or .com?

Either works. Nominet’s policy sets no UK address requirement for .uk or .co.uk. Choose .co.uk if your readers are mainly British, choose .com if you want an international audience, and register both if both are cheap.

Can I change my blog name later?

Yes, but it takes work. You would register the new domain, move the site, redirect every old address to its new one and update your social profiles. It is far cheaper to spend an hour checking the name now.

How we ran the test, and its limits

We recorded the first ten suggestions in each tool’s display order for each seed, or all of them where a tool showed fewer. We typed only the seed words, with no extra settings, except on Atlasmic, where we set its category menu to Travel or Food to match the seed. Namelix ran on its Auto style and Medium randomness. Each name became a .com by removing spaces and punctuation and writing “&” as “and”. For Themeisle, which returns .net, .co and .org strings as well, we checked the .com of the same string, so its claims about those other endings were not tested.

All checks used one registrar on one afternoon. Availability changes daily, and AI generators give different names on each run, so a repeat test will not match ours name for name. Every name, price, claim and registry date from the test is in our results spreadsheet (CSV).

Sources

• Generators tested on 30 October 2026: Wix, Squarespace, Ryan Robinson, Themeisle, Namelix and Atlasmic. Not testable: Canva (login required) and name-generator.org.uk (no topic input).
• Availability and prices: Porkbun domain search (bulk search and single searches, 30 October 2026); registration dates from Verisign’s .com RDAP service.
• Trade marks: GOV.UK, Search for a trade mark; UK IPO keyword search; USPTO trademark search; ibis budget on Accor’s website.
• .uk rules: Nominet UK Registration Policy; Nominet Terms and Conditions of Domain Name Registration; Nominet reserved .uk rights FAQ.