Perfect Travel Blog Names – Find One In 10 Steps (By a Travel Blogger!)

Are you struggling to find a good and unique travel blog name idea?

The struggle is real!

In fact, for me, choosing my travel blog name was one of the hardest parts about starting a travel blog.

I mean, you come up with the perfect name for a travel blog, only to find out its already taken by another blogger.

Or every travel blog name idea you are able to come up with just sounds silly, or too long, or too boring.

You start searching for travel blog name generators, hoping some computer program will just magically generate a name for you… but, still, no luck…

Well, don’t worry: I’m here to help you pick the coolest, most unique, and absolutely best travel blog names out there.

Just follow these 10 steps and I promise you’ll find the perfect travel blog name for you!

Oh, and if you need help picking a name, simply email me at nate@travellemming.com with your travel blog name ideas and I’ll give you my thoughts on them (really, I help several new bloggers per week – 100% for free!).

PS – If you like this article, be sure to check out my detailed Superstar Blogging Review for my take on the most popular travel blogging course (I’ve also reviewed a popular travel writing course too).

You can also check out our mega-post on 52 Ways to Get Paid to Travel if you need another remote income source while your blog grows.

Lastly, if you’re a new blogger, be sure to sign up for my newsletter below and I’ll send you some insider tips for how to start a successful blog (including links to 7 secret Facebook groups that can supercharge your blogging!):

10 Steps to Picking Travel Blog Names

[affiliate disclosure: I may make a small commission at no charge to you if you make any purchases through my affiliate links on this page – it’s how you make money as a travel blogger!]

Before we get started with step one, it’s important to remember that any name you pick needs to be available (duh!). And nowadays many aren’t. So, as ideas pop into your head, just enter them into this nifty tool to make sure the URL is actually available:

Step One: Decide What Your Travel Blog is About

Before you can pick a name for your blog, you first have to sort out what your blog is about. Now I know what you’re probably thinking:

Uhhh, duh, Nate: it’s about travel, you idiot!

Yeah, sure, I get it. But guess what? Just having a generic travel blog isn’t going to cut it anymore. There are thousands of travel blogs out there, and the ones that really succeed are those that hone in on a specific niche.

My niche, for example, is about emerging and off the beaten path destinations. And all the popular travel blogs out there have a specific niche: The Blonde Abroad is about fashion and female travel, Nomadic Matt is about budget travel, Migrationology is about food and travel.

Deciding on a niche for your travel blog is really important to starting a successful travel blog (check out my advanced guide to finding blog post ideas people will actually read for more on that….).

Plus, help you focus in on your search for that cool travel blog name….

Step Two: Decide if You Will Use Your Real Name

The next thing you need to decide is if you want your own name in your blog title (e.g., “TravelNate.com”) or if you want a more generic non-personal title (e.g., “TravelLemming.com”).

READ NEXT: How to Find Freelance Travel Writing Jobs (A Complete Guide)

The advantage of having your personal name in your travel blog name is that it makes it much easier for your audience to identify with you, and it is much easier to develop a personal brand on social media. It also means you are basically halfway to picking the perfect blog name!

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages to putting your own name in your blog name. The most important of those is that it can be limiting if you ever want to sell your travel blog (yes, there is a thriving market for selling profitable blogs!). There is also some advantage from a search-engine-optimization perspective to having a descriptive travel blog name.

Step Three: Fill Out A Travel Blog Names Worksheet

The next step towards picking your name is get a piece of paper (or open a Word doc) and create and fill out four columns:

1. Your Name – pretty self explanatory!
2. Travel-Related Words – this is where you put nouns and adjectives that relate to travel (e.g., “travel,” “nomad,” “wandering,” “international,” etc.)
3. Niche-Specific Words – this is for nouns and adjectives that relate to your chosen niches (e.g., “scuba,” “solo,” “food,” etc.)
4. Personal/Creative Words – this is where you should get creative. Throw in original words that have a meaning to you but don’t fit into the above category. For example, in my case I chose the word “lemming” because it evokes the herd-mentality of many travelers (thanks to this crazy story involving Disney murdering a bunch of poor lemmings!).

Since my niche emerging destinations, my list originally included a bunch of words around that concept. I also included a few personal words (I’m tall, and an American from Denver, Colorado) plus some creative words around animals that follow each other to the same places.

Next step? Combining these into some awesome travel blog names:

Step Four: Create a Shortlist of Names

Now the fun begins!

Start mixing and matching words from your worksheet. Come up with as many combos as you can!

For me, some combinations I shortlisted included: “Nate Worldwide,” “Beyond the Path,” “The Mile High Explorer,” “The Emerging Explorer,” and, of course, “Travel Lemming.”

Step Five: Make Sure Your Name Ideas Are Available and Original

Unfortunately, as I said at the start, a lot of good travel blog names are already taken. So to make sure yours are available, you need to do each of the follow steps for each of your shortlisted names:

• First, make sure the URL for your travel blog name idea is available. To do that, click here to input your name ideas and check availability.
• Second, Google the name to make sure no one else is using it or a variant (if someone is using the brand “Emerging Explorer” already, it wouldn’t be a smart idea to use “The Emerging Explorer” even though that URL is technically available).
• Third, run a Basic Word Mark Search at the USTPO to make sure your name or a variant isn’t trademarked (this is a step that many people forget!).
• Fourth, make sure the social media handles are available for your brand for every platform you might use (the main ones are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube). Note that Twitter has a character limit for handles, but I think it’s ok to shorten your Twitter handle if needed.

Do each of the above four steps for each of your travel blog name ideas. If a name fails any one of these tests, you need to cross it off your list.

Step Six: Bounce Your Favorite Travel Blog Names Off Friends

Ok, now you have a shortlist of travel blog names you can actually use! Time to get a second (and third and fourth) opinion to help you decide on the ultimate winner.

How?

• Ask your friends and family
• Start a poll on Facebook
• Join Super Star Blogging and ask other bloggers for feedback – One of the best decisions I made when starting my blotg was to pay for the SuperStar Blogging course. If you decide to join (read here for my review of SuperStar Blogging), you get access to a private Facebook with over 1,000 bloggers who are happy to give feedback on picking your blog niche and name.
• Email me – Seriously, do it: I’m more than happy to help (I do this 3-5 times per week)! Just shoot me an email at nate@travellemming.com with your ideas for your name.

Step Seven: Choose a Winner

This is the hard part of course. But if you’ve followed the above steps, you should have some good travel blog names to choose from!

But once you pick one, you aren’t done yet! Step Eight is really important….

Step Eight: Register Your New Travel Blog Name

Once you’ve picked the perfect travel blog name, you need to lock it down by registering it so no one else can take it.

There are a ton of companies that will register domain names for you, but usually it’s easiest to do it through your website host (that’s the company which houses your site).

I personally highly recommend Siteground for hosting. Click here to check out their hosting plans.

For most new travel blogs, you’ll be fine with just their StartUp Plan ($3.95/month) plus the $15.95 charge to register your domain.

And, yes, if you sign up for Siteground through the above link, I get a small commission (that’s how us travel bloggers make money!). But you don’t have to use my link, and you can trust my recommendation of Siteground because I personally run Travel Lemming on it! I used to run on a different host, and when that expired I did a TON of research to find the best hosting company. Unless you want to pay through the nose for premium enterprise hosting (think $100+ per month), Siteground is the fastest, most secure, most reliable option you can get.

What about free hosting you ask? Well, that’s a really, really bad idea unless you are just a really casual blogger who doesn’t plan to make any money. Yes, there are sites (such as BlogSpot or WordPress.com) that will host your blog for free. But it will be on their domain (e.g. “YourTravelBlogName.Wordpress.com”). Every single successful travel blogger I know self hosts and it is definitely worth $4/month.

Step Nine: Set Up Your Travel Site

I’m not going to lie: if you’re new to blogging, setting up your site can be really difficult and a ton of work.

You basically have two options: pay someone to do it or push through and figure it out yourself.

Paying someone can be pricey, and ultimately if you’re going to be a successful travel blogger, you’re just going to have to learn the basics of running a website. So in my opinion it’s best to just square your shoulders and tackle it head on.

That’s one of the reasons I thought investing in the Super Star Blogging course was such a great decision: it guides you through the process step by step, plus you get access to an absolutely awesome tech wizard who will help you set up your site.

Note that most serious travel bloggers choose to use the WordPress.org platform (not to be confused with WordPress.com!). To do that, you’ll need to get and customize a WordPress theme (I personally use the Rise Theme by Thrive Themes, which is an easy starter theme if you don’t want to have to do any coding, but there are many out there).

For a step-by-step guide on how to start and step up your travel blog, click here.

Step Ten: Claim Your Social Media Handles

Don’t forget to claim every social media handle for your brand – even if you don’t think you’ll use that platform!

For example, be sure to claim “Facebook.com/YourTravelBlogName,” “Instagram.com/YourTravelBlogName” etc.

Need your first follower? Shoot me an email at nate@travellemming.com and I promise I’ll follow all your accounts right away!

Oh, and if you want to return the favor you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Assorted Tips for Choosing a Travel Blog Name

Here’s a few other random tips to keep in mind when selecting a name for your travel blog:

• Keep it short and sweet – The fewer words, the better. Try to keep it to 2-4 words!
• Try to balance being original and being descriptive – Most of the popular travel blogs out there (here’s a list of a bunch) use the same words: travel, nomad, adventure, etc. It’s boring an unoriginal but they also do it for a reason: having a clear and descriptive name helps new readers understand what you are about. Nomadic Matt, Expert Vagabond, The Blonde Abroad – these names all give a quick idea of what their sites are about. And they are all enormously successful travel bloggers as it happens. So try to find that sweet spot between original and descriptive.
• Avoid any extensions other than .com or .co.uk, or your country domain if you’re targeting a specific country (e.g., .nl for the netherlands) – Sure, you can now buy all kinds of domains like “TravelBlogName.travel,” “TravelBlogName.rocks,” and “TravelBlogName.blog.” But that doesn’t mean you should: I know multiple bloggers who have tried this and they’ve found that it is has hurt their ability to grow, as Google doesn’t always give preference to these domain names and some brands won’t recognize them. In short, this isn’t an area where you should get cute with your travel blog name.
• Avoid dashses, underscores, or numbers in your name – It can be tempting to help secure the URL for that cool travel blog name, but its generally a bad idea.
• Think about how your blog niche may change over time – Life changes, sometimes in ways you can’t predict. But you can’t so easily change travel blog names. So if you’re currently a solo traveler and want to blog about that, consider what will happen if you meet a significant other. Or if you’re planning to blog as a couple, you might want to at least think about (and this is awkward, I know) what happens if the relationship doesn’t work out. Whatever you do, just be sure to think long term when picking a travel blog name. If you don’t believe me, read this cautionary tale from Drew Binsky, who used to blog as “The Hungry Partier” until he outgrew the party phase of his life and had to rebrand his whole site.
• Once you pick your travel blog name, own it – Buyer’s remorse is a real thing. There are plenty of times when I wish I had used one of my other travel blog names I had planned, but the truth is that once you pick a name you just have to make it your own and go with it! There are plenty of bloggers who have imperfect names and yet are very successful. So once you’ve picked your name and set up your travel blog, stop worrying about it!

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That’s it for this ultimate guide to picking travel blog names! If you have any questions, scroll down to leave a comment.

New to travel blogging?

You should also really read my Guide to Blogging for Beginners. It has four important tips I wish I had know when I started travel blogging!

And once you are a little more advanced with your travel blogging, you’ll want to read my Guide to Finding Blog Post Ideas People Will Actually Read. It dives deep in how to get people to actually come to your site!

You’ll also definitely want to sign up to receive my insider travel blogging tips! You can do that by entering your email in the box here and signing up for my periodic newsletter:

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