Whats in a Name?

Shakespeare famously said: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)


But is that true?  We spend a lot of time naming things.  We name our pets and our children.  And then we give pet names to each other.  We name our cars and we name our discoveries.  We must think that names are important.  Or maybe we think that when we name something, we own it.  (My Dear, My Sweetheart, My Pookilicious?)


So important, so fraught is this naming business, I was nearly paralyzed when it came time to pick a name for my Etsy store.  And then, just to add to my general baseline anxiety, when you start an account on Etsy, the registration page tells you that you should pick a good name, BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO CHANGE IT LATER.


This is a terrible thing to tell a brand new entrepreneur.  Back in those days, I thought that I would be selling paintings on Etsy.  Maybe purses.  No, watercolors.  Or backpacks.  Or appliquéd patches. Or earrings.  I honestly had no idea what would sell.  I could see that people were selling all of these things, but I didn't know why, or how they had found their market.  My plan was to test a few items in each category until I found something that buyers liked.   

So, back to the name.  Here were my general requirements

• It needed to be nonspecific enough to accommodate whatever artsy-craftsy thing I ended up making that people would buy.
• It needed to be memorable.
• It needed to be easy to search for.

So, because I couldn't be sure of what my final product would be, I decide to make my business name about me.  Bitsi has been my parents' nickname for me since I was a baby.  (Yes, they spelled it with an 'i' on the end.  My mother spells a lot of things with an 'i' on the end.)  So my artsy alter-ego would be named Bitsi too.  And sometimes just Bits, like when Bitsi sounded too-twee to me.


After deciding on Bitsi as an element of the name, I decided to distinguish myself a little by sticking the Artsi prefix on, too.  (as if there was going to be a lot of confusion about which "Bitsi" I was.) But I particularly liked the lyrical sound of it: "Artsee Bitsee dot Etsee dot com".  And for a while, I dithered on whether to spell it ArtsyBitsy.etsy.com, with 'y's, to make the rhyme more obvious.


Well, you know how it turned out.  I decided to leave Bitsi with an 'i', and then  Artsi had to also have an 'i' too.  And that choice has made it a little easier to find me online.  And eventually even Google stopped asking me "Did you mean Artsy Bitsy?"


What's in a name? I'm still not sure. Would I be doing better if my store name matched my products?  Or would I start to feel limited by a shop name like "Monsters R Us"?  


What have you named lately?