I have an absurdly common name and literally every combination of my
first, last and middle initial are taken. I want to avoid using numbers
and try to have a somewhat professional email address. Not for job hunting but in general. Preference is to
use Gmail. Also I cant buy my own domain because I don’t have a credit
card and even if I did, my name is taken in .com and a few others I believe
When signing up for a Youtube account, most permutations of my name were taken. I tried firstnamelastname, firstinitiallastname, firstnamelastinitial, etc. I finally settled on “emilygclarinet”, emily being my fist name, g being my last-name initial, and clarinet being the instrument I play.
Either add your profession (garbageman.john.smith) or add a made up name (john.obadiah.smith) such as your father’s name, his middle name, your pet’s name (hint: john.mrsfluffybuns.smith is not professional sounding) etc. If somebody asks, you can either explain it, or just say it’s a name you don’t use.
My main address is a reasonably obscure, emotionally neutral English word that personally appeals to me, was available without numbers, and isn’t too hard to spell. YMMV.
I’d go with SOLUTIONS. It’s professional, yet generic enough that it works for just about any career (should you ever change jobs, etc). Not so stuffy that casual aquaintances will be put off by it either.
Gmail ignores periods, so this is the same as johnsmith @ gmail.com. This comes in handy if you want to give your address out with different dotting for sorting purposes, but all dot-based variations of this address already belong to johnsmith (or john.smith, however he originally signed up).
