What’s in a name...?

In 1991, I started an official cartoon.... single panel with a gagline. I had messed with a few cartoons here and there, and then decided I would try my hand at something more official. I started to create my own cartoon series. But I needed a name. I poured over the thesaurus trying to find just the right name to call my series. A name that would wrap up the overall feeling my ‘toons conveyed. I had always heard it was better to name things with names that start with letters that show up earlier in the alphabet... apparently alphabetical order matters? So I thought about naming my cartoon series Aardvark. But that seemed confusing... especially because I have never created a cartoon with an aardvark in it. So I skipped that name and pretty quickly wound up with the title Zany. I’m still not sure alphabetical order matters...but if it does... I doomed my ‘toons early on. Going from A to Z took all of 2 minutes and I had the title I was going to use (although... “Going A to Z” might not be a bad cartoon title either....). All through college my cartoons had the ZANY title. I put that title on all my mini books... all my copyright work.... and then I went off and did a cartoon Rip Van Winkle thing.

The world has changed in the 20 years since I began, and over those years I have thought about how I would cartoon now. What would be different? The difference between paper and pixel. In the old days I would gather up my ‘toons, take them to a photocopier... make a book... then pass them out to a few people. Now to show off my cartoons it is all web based, which requires a website and a social media site to get the ‘toons out to people. This is where my new learning journey began... websites need domain names and “Zany” had long been taken. I tried to come up with a new name for my cartoons and just couldn’t find one that felt right (although Going A to Z is growing on me...). So I revisited different ways Zany might work. I learned quite a bit about web domains and the ins and outs of finding a name that can work for your needs. I also gained a greater appreciation for those crazy made-up names that new start ups have... Etsy, Twitter, and Flickr are just a few crazy spellings that come to mind.

I settled on Zanyee. Just add some extra “e” sounds at the end of Zany... and “wah-lah”... you have Zanyee. This allowed my ‘toons to have a name that was close to the original and could still be used with the current day web services. From paper to pixels, mini books to websites, and finally, Zany to Zanyee... it has been an educational journey. (Now I’m off to look up the domain name for .goingAtoZ... or .goingA2Z...or .g0ing@2zee....)