I have a personal website, that I originally set up using my name,
instead of the name of my production company which is g. a. f.
hosted anywhere.
Lewellen is welsh, and there are several different spellings.
All of the Welsh Llewllyns I know (a few, from my wife's history) have four Ls and a Y in their spelling.
(But then I'm not one to talk. There are more Leibowitz's than Leibovitch's out there, but they all trace the same Romanian roots.)
I got
leibovitch.ca and
evanleibovitch.com ages ago but have never really used them. The latter I may keep for defensive purposes just in case I really piss someone off; I'm getting old but there's still time.
A surprising number of domains are unused and just kept for defensive purposes (ie, I won't use it but I don't want anyone else to have it either).
Imagine my surprise though learning there is another karen lewellen.
My own site being
That's the whole point of the new TLDs, dot-com doesn't have to be the make-or-break TLD anymore (though it is still the preferred default).
My solution these days to unavailable first-choice domains is to add punctuation, for instance
karen-lewellen.com is available and works fine.
Do not get me started on the gmail problems, I still get her stuff
That's the biggest flaw of domains versus search. Search engines can add context such as location.
There is only one
joespizza.com in the world and it's in Los Angeles. The most famous Joe's Pizza had to settle for
joespizzanyc.com because the California place registered first.
But searching "Joe's Pizza near me" will almost always come up with something more useful wherever you are, when used here offering one in Brampton (
joesbigpizza.ca)
When the nonprofit organization I worked for first chose a name the idea
was to hype the name of our flagship radio series, Curtain Up!
As we distributed Curtain Up! our founder decided curtain up distribution
was a fine name..but this was before we had a web presence.
giving my work email address is quite a dance, our site is
ahem.
Domain names are the least of this organization's problems, as a casual search reveals the term "curtain up" is used in major contexts within the London and Broadway theatre scenes.
Good and distinct naming for an organization is way more off-topic and out of scope than this thread has already evolved. Any domain problems here are symptoms and not causes.
My point is that there really can be far more than vanity in a domain
name, especially when you want to be found, and fund raise, and so forth.
You're confusing domain names with corporate identity.
A domain name is just a tool, not the identity, except for those few and diminishing companies whose domain name IS the company name (such as "
pets.com").
Creating a functional corporate identity, which includes but is not limited to branding, is a much bigger deal than the domain name chosen.