Hi, I am Mr Lark.

Why is there "Mr" in my name? Nothing deep: mrlark.com was the shortest domain I could register, and "Mr" came with it.

If I could register lark.com, I would just be Lark. If I could register musk.com, I would not mind being Musk either. My online name was not invented; it was what remained.

That may sound casual, but I paid tuition twice before I learned it. In the end, a good name is plain: it should be easy to say and easy to remember.

That lesson came from two bad names I used before.

Two bad names I used

My first name was "Xiaolin's Mischief Dragon."

It was a mix of The Dragon Maid of Kobayashi's House and Water Margin: one is an anime, the other is a classic Chinese novel. When I came up with it, I thought I was being clever. It had a little anime energy and a little classical-literature energy.

Later I found three problems:

  • It was too long. Seven Chinese characters are already a lot to remember.
  • The reference was too obscure. People who had not watched the anime missed one half, and people who had not read Water Margin missed the other.
  • It was hard to address. In Chinese, people usually use two-character names, so I still did not know whether people should call me "Xiaolin" or "Jianglong."

Later I changed it to "Yinke Jun," using "Yinke" as a sound-alike for Ink.

That name was shorter, but it still had two problems:

  • The reference was still too obscure. Most people saw "Yinke" and thought of stamping or carving, not Ink.
  • It was still awkward to say. "Yinke" and "Yinke Jun" both felt a little stiff.

The two names looked different, but the real problem was the same: they were names I liked, not names other people could use.

A name should be easy for readers

After those two failures, I understood something simple: the main user of a name is the reader.

Once a name is chosen, I barely use it except when I introduce myself. Readers, on the other hand, see it again and again. They see it when they read my articles, and they see it when they want to contact me.

So the standard should come from the reader. For readers, a name only needs two things: it should be easy to say, and easy to remember.

Easy to say means no hesitation when someone leaves a comment or mentions you in conversation. "Mr Lark, this was a good article" sounds normal. "Xiaolin's Mischief Dragon, this was a good article" does not.

Easy to remember means people can find you again. That is where the domain comes in.

A name should have a short domain

Why care about a domain? Because platforms are unreliable.

Today a platform may think you are worth recommending. Tomorrow it may decide you no longer fit its direction and stop showing your work.

A domain is the fixed place you control. With mrlark.com, anyone who wants to see what I am doing has somewhere stable to go. A platform can stop recommending me, but on my own site, I am still the main character.

So my rule is to reverse the usual order: check the domain first, then choose from the names that are still available. A name can fit the domain, but the domain cannot fit the name.

That is how I ended up with "Mr Lark": first mrlark.com, then "Mr."

It may not be the most striking name at first glance, but it can be spoken, it can be remembered, and I am willing to keep using it. That is enough.