Lay claim to your name

By RICHARD BRADDELL

Not so many years ago, family names were the preserve of the loftier members of society.

Hoi polloi simply described themselves by vocation, such as smith, or by appearance, such as black.

But the internet boom, and whatever follows, will almost certainly create a demand for a breed of names that will reflect the desire of individuals to distinguish themselves from one another.

So believes former Wellington investment banker Robert Wiles, whose thinking on the subject has been stimulated by a swag of genealogical and name research done to back his personal website name registration venture, Pdom (www.pdom.com).

Canadian-born Mr Wiles hit on the idea two years ago when he set up a family website.

The process of registering his site sparked the idea of setting up a quick and easy internet business for searching and registering personal domain names.

From that came a venture which aims to be a global leader in personal website registration, and one he believes has considerable earnings potential, even though the $US14 ($34.47) a year registration fee charged by Pdom is less than half that of similar services.

But why would you want a personal domain name?

Aside from following the lead of American schoolgirls, who unabashedly pour their hearts out on personal websites, you may simply choose to use it as a front-end for personalised access to e-mail that will follow you around the globe, in the manner of Hotmail.

For an e-mail address via your personal site, you pay $US6. For the nomadic, that may be cheap at the price.

Logging on to Pdom just to see who else has your name can be illuminating.

For instance, 2.8 million people have the surname Smith in the United States, but fewer than 3000 are called Wiles.

Pdom offers a secondary market for trading domain-name registrations, and information on the commonality or scarcity of a name can be important in determining its value.

The dotcom of one of the world's most common names, for example, may be worth millions and, at 4 per cent commission, valuable to Pdom for matching buyer with seller.

Pdom also has a top 100 celebrity sites, with rugby star Jonah Lomu sitting at No 6 among luminaries such as actor Michael Douglas and golfer Tiger Woods.

It currently offers domain names ending only in .com, .net and .org, but domain names from British, Australian and New Zealand registries may follow.

Links


Pdom