So I got hold of a domain that shows my exact full name. I thought it would be useful for showing up as “professional” when working in IT and sending resumes.
I got some mail forwarded using the domain registrar. I also made a small static website, which only has hello world for now but soon will get the contents filled up.
But then… what? I suppose I can host anything I want, but then there’s the whole “real name - gotta look professional” aspect that makes me weary of hosting a Lemmy instance, for example, when the domain without my name attached wouldn’t.
I suppose having personal domains were cool in the 90s where people were barely learning about “the internets”. Not so anymore?
Is there a usefulness in having a domain name with your real name attached on this age?
I use a domain with my surname in it to host only things where I reveal my identity anyway. my Linkstack, my personal blog, etc.
I did have to exchange a couple emails with the legal department of a very wealthy company after I registered it because my last name is part of their company name.
How did that exchange go?
They try to tell you that you can’t use your last name?
Yeah, basically. I laid it out that it was my actual surname, and not only was the domain not going to be used in their industry, but wouldn’t be used commercially at all. At that point they backed down and basically said ok but if you try anything funny we’ll be back.
I did a lot of digging at the time and you actually can trademark a surname, kinda, but there are a lot of specific circumstances surrounding it that I could have also argued didn’t apply. Problem is, they know full well I couldn’t afford to fight them on it in court so if they really wanted it taken down they probably could have pushed me into it. The biggest factor was that the surname is incredibly rare and the average person would only associate it with their company, it would be a totally different case if they were “John Smith inc” which would be a lot harder to defend. Once they saw I was just a guy with the surname using it for personal websites though, the fact that they backed off was kinda cool since they probably could have pressed me way harder if they really wanted to.