6 funny domain names and what they can teach us

5 minute read

Shakespeare once wrote ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.’

But does everyone agree with The Bard? What if roses were called bog weeds or swamp sprouts? Would people still buy them by the dozen on Valentine’s day?

The fact is that names matter today. Especially online.

Why?

Because of a phenomenon called Domain Name Confusion. It’s where people see words embedded in web addresses, whether they’re there intentionally or not.

It occurs because the DNS – Domain Name System – is not case sensitive, it doesn’t recognise punctuation and it ignores spaces; it crunches words together in a way that, unfortunately, can make whole new words appear.

So, if you innocently miss an innuendo or a typo in a domain name, your site will become less point and click and more point and laugh.

The moral of the story? You need to choose your domain name with care.

When looking for your ideal domain, have a play around. Look for variations of your name with hyphens, for example. Or tailor your web address using a quirkier TLD like .beer or .kiwi.

Now, let’s look at a few websites that could have benefited from that particular piece of advice.

Funny domain name 1: childrenswear.co.uk

Children’s Wear is the Birmingham-based supplier of formalwear for children. They did the obvious thing and registered their company name as their domain. Unfortunately, since DNS doesn’t use punctuation, they couldn’t add the possessive comma so, instead of seeing ‘Children’s Wear’, we see ‘Children Swear’.

Funny domain name 2: choosespain.com

The Choose Spain name is no-longer active. Spanish tourism no-longer labours under that painful name. It has long been replaced by sites like Always Spain which, thanks to that double S, avoids the pitfall Chooses Pain fell into.

This is a serious issue because, if you want to sell your products or services internationally, you have to think about how your name will appear in other languages. In the original Spanish ‘Elige España’ has no humorous misreading but, once it's translated into English, it all looks very different.

If you have contacts in foreign markets, it might be worth checking how your web address reads with them. Just a few phone calls or emails might help you avoid some domain pain.

Funny domain name 3: teacherstalk.com

Teachers Stalk was set up as part of a well-meaning attempt to create a perfectly innocent forum for educational professionals.

However, after people around the world started misreading the name, the site was taken down.

Funny domain name 4: gotahoenorth

This is a site promoting tourism in the northern Lake Tahoe area. It is not a place to get a long-handled gardening tool.

Unfortunately, the lack of spacing and caps makes this one difficult to read correctly, even when you know what it says. This is possibly because the phrase “go tahoe” is not one most people are likely to encounter, beyond the borders of Nevada.

Funny domain name 5: itscrap.com

Regency Technologies were clearly advised by an SEO professional to integrate a search term into their domain name. Since their specialism is disposing of IT eqipment, it seemed reasonable to go with IT Scrap.

Unfortunately, the name says it all with this one.

To their credit, Regency can clearly see the humour in this and, whilst their domain is now the far more straightforward regencytechnologies.com, the itscrap.com link is still live and still in use. After all, traffic is traffic, however it finds its way to you.

Funny domain name 6: oldmanshaven.com

This is actually a site for a business which specialises in renting plush holiday cabins in the woods in Ohio.

It’s not a barber shop specialising in shaving the chins of elderly patrons.

Over to you…

Have you discovered a few unintentionally funny domains our other readers should be aware of? Come find us on Facebook or Twitter and let everyone know.