As I work at an educational facility with awful IT support and an instable e-mail platform, I am considering a switch to gmail.
Assume my last name is “Smith”, every first name/last name combination is taken (e.g, phungismith@, smithphungi@, phungi_smith@, smith_phungi@, etc)
My goals are to keep some level of professionalism, and perhaps keep some form of branding for my institute (e.g., if this were Ohio State Univ, have OSU in the title)
The two I came up with are:
Thoughts, recommendations?
hadn’t thought of that angle…
I recommend trying it with dots.
or
you should be able to come up with something!
By golly you are right! I never knew 
Thanks for the info.
Maybe add a city/state to the name?
johndoemichigan@gmail dot com
johndoedetroit@gmail dot com
Or profession?
johndoegraphicartist@gmail dot com
johndoehistoryteacher@gmail dot com
keep it simple…it is awkward to use underscores, or dots or (especially) the “mail.” prefix.
Many people expect an email address to be in the standard format ( aSimpleWordorTwo at anotherWord dot com ) , and will make mistakes typing anything else.
I like the idea of adding your profession like Dmark suggested.
Definitely stay away from underscores, a significant number of people can’t deal with them; they think they are spaces and/or don’t know how to type them on a keyboard.
I’d suggest psmithOSU@gmail.com
Gwuh? I realize people are confused by underscores (no idea why, but here we are), but dots are so ubiquitous that I can’t even think of a single time someone’s batted an eyelash. Hell, my last company (a really freaking huge one, at that) threw dots all over the place in employees’ e-mail addresses, and as much as I had to give my e-mail address over the phone, I’ve never had an issue with the dots. I’ve had to spell my last name over and over and OVER again, but the dots were good.
My first thought would be to work in the middle initial. Then two letters of the middle initial. Beyond that you may have to start numbering it.
Yes. As are all of the ones with different numbers of X’s, using “Phan,” “foreva,” “4evs,” et cetera, and every conceivable misspelling or slang abbreviation of Bieber’s name-- Beiber, Beebs, Beebz, BBer, Bebier, and so forth. Trust me, I used a computer.
I was an early subscriber to Gmail, however instead of firstname.lastname@gmail.com, I had to take lastname.firstname@gmail.com. Some other dude with my name, living in Virginia has been invited to parties over the years.
I wish he would have shown up!
Just to echo what Eliahna mentioned upthread, gmail ignores all dots (so xxxxx@gmail.com is the exact same as x.x.x.x.x@gmail.com). It ignores capital letters as well (xxxxx@gmail.com = X.x.X.x.X@gmail.com).
Why not just use a number at the end? What’s wrong with phungismith214@gmail.com?
(Another gmail trick is that you can add “+anythingyouwant” at the end of the prefix. So xxxxx@gmail.com = xxxxx+BurgerKing@gmail.com - handy if you need to sign up for something, but are suspicious they might send you spam for the rest of your life (and sell it to other spammers). You can then filter out any messages sent to xxxxx+BurgerKing@gmail.com.)