“what’s in a name?”

William Shakespeare once wrote, “what’s in a name?” well if your name is also your website address, it’s very important, If someone misspells my name they will not be able to find my site! Arfon, (yes it is Welsh it means "Across from Anglesey" which is a coincidence really because I do just that) is not a name that people from outside Wales find easy to pronounce. Throughout my life I have had people drop the ‘r’ and call me “Afon” and after thirty something years of it I have learnt to live with it. But as the world continues to grow smaller my name continues to baffle people, so much so that I thought of addressing this with a recently abandoned business card in which a pronunciation guide could be located on the back of the card, Arfon Jones* Artist /Illustrator *pronounced “Arr-von”. But it’s not so much the pronunciation that’s the problem here it the fact that some people write my name as they would (try to) say it, either missing the above mentioned ‘r’ or bizarrely calling me “Afron” why this happens I have no idea… But either way it’s not ideal when it’s a website address. But what can I do? It’s my name, it’s located at the bottom of my work. I have no middle name, and Jones is the reverse of Arfon, in that it’s a very common Welsh name! Because Arfon is an uncommon name (if you are also called Arfon be sure to say hello at the bottom of this post!) I wasn’t given a nickname I could use instead of my real name (well one that I would wish to use on my work anyway!) I am known simply as Arfon... So how to combat this website address problem? Register the variations people use and redirect them to arfon.net? No, that would be costly! I know I shall write a blog entry about my name, writing it seven times, highlighting it each time and point out that it can also be found on my logo in the hopes that people will pick it up…

© Arfon Jones 2012. All images are copyrighted throughout the world.