How to choose a username you will keep

Choosing a username feels trivial until you have typed eleven candidates and hate all of them. A short framework fixes that. Run each candidate through five tests, in order, and the decision usually makes itself.

Test 1: the phone call test

Say the username out loud, once, as if telling someone over a bad phone connection. If you need to spell it, add “no, underscore, not dash,” or explain a number, it fails. anna.perez passes. xX_anna_Xx does not survive contact with speech.

Test 2: the five year test

Will this still be true and non-embarrassing in five years? Job titles change less than employers. Cities change less than neighborhoods. Crafts change less than trends. anna.codes survives a job change; anna.at.acme does not.

Test 3: the whiteboard test

Imagine the handle written on a whiteboard, a receipt, or a shop window. Ambiguous characters kill handles in print: the letter l next to the digit 1, o next to 0, doubled letters at a word boundary like lessseen. If someone copying it from a poster could get it wrong, they will.

Test 4: the everywhere test

Check the name against other platforms before falling in love. X caps handles at 15 characters and bans periods. Facebook bans underscores. The handle checker runs all of these at once and shows the nearest version that works everywhere, which sometimes is the better name.

Test 5: the rules test

Last because it is mechanical: the name has to pass the WhatsApp format rules. Run it through the username checker, which validates every rule live and fixes what fails. The full rule list is in the rules guide.

Then stop

A username that passes all five tests is done. There is no sixth test where a perfect name appears. Claim it before someone else does, and put the remaining energy into what the account actually says. If you are stuck generating candidates in the first place, the generator exists precisely for that stage.