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Choosing a username or gamertag you will not regret in five years
Most people pick a username in about thirty seconds, at the moment a sign-up form demands one. Then they live with it for years. It ends up on a gaming profile, in a Discord server, on a stream overlay, in a work Slack, sometimes in an email address. A little thought up front saves a lot of awkward explaining later.
What makes a handle work
A good username does four things.
It is easy to say. If you have to spell it out every time someone asks, it is working against you. Try telling it to a friend over voice chat. If they type it wrong, simplify it.
It is easy to read. Avoid characters that look alike: a lowercase l and a capital I, a zero and a capital O, rn and m. "Il1lI" might feel clever until nobody can find you.
It is available where you need it. The best handle is the one you can have everywhere. Check the main platforms before you commit; a name you can get on one service but not on three others means a different name in each place.
It ages well. A handle based on a current meme, your age or your favourite show this year will date. Neutral words travel further.
The shapes most usernames take
Look at a big list of handles and most fall into a few patterns.
Two words pressed together. VelvetOtter, NorthByNine, QuietHarbor. Usually an adjective and a noun. They are readable, sound like a name and work almost anywhere. Capitalising each word helps where the platform allows it.
A word and a number. pixelmoth42, raven7. Useful when the word you want is taken. Keep the number short and meaningful to you, and avoid your birth year if you would rather not broadcast your age.
Underscore or dot pairs. quiet_comet, ashen.harbor. Common on Instagram, TikTok and anywhere case is ignored, because the separator does the job capitals would otherwise do. Check that the platform allows the separator before you build an identity on it.
A short single word. Nyx, Lumen, Fox. The cleanest option and the hardest to get, since short real words were taken long ago on most services. Invented words are easier: a made-up but pronounceable word is likely to be free everywhere.
Gaming styles. Gamertags have their own conventions: aggressive compounds (GrimVoltage), x-wrapped names (xShadowx), and a trailing number or clan prefix. They suit gaming but can look out of place on a professional profile, which matters if you plan to stream or build anything public.
Platform limits
Every service has its own rules for length and characters, and they change from time to time. A few things are worth checking before you settle on a handle:
- Length. Some gaming networks cap gamertags at a dozen characters or so. A long handle that fits on one platform will be cut short on another.
- Spaces. Xbox gamertags can contain spaces; most social networks cannot.
- Separators. Underscores are widely allowed. Dots and hyphens are not.
- Case. Many platforms treat VelvetOtter and velvetotter as the same name. Do not rely on capitals to make a handle unique.
If you want one name everywhere, design it for the strictest platform you use: short, letters and digits, no spaces, readable in lower case.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- Personal details. Real full name plus birth year plus home town is a gift to anyone trying to find you. Keep one or two of those out.
- Things you will outgrow. "xXSlayerKid2011Xx" is fine at twelve and less fine at twenty-five, when it is still attached to your oldest friends list.
- Copying a brand or a famous handle. It invites confusion, can get the account suspended and is always going to be taken somewhere.
- Too many look-alike tricks. Replacing letters with numbers (n00b, l33t) dates instantly and makes the name hard to search.
- Inconsistency for no reason. A different handle on every service makes you hard to find. If you do want separate identities, for example a private gaming name and a public professional one, make that a choice rather than an accident.
Check availability before you fall in love
Once you have a shortlist, check it on every platform you care about before picking one. It is common to find a perfect name, start using it on one service and then find it is taken on the one that matters most. Searching the exact handle, with and without separators, also shows whether someone with a similar name already has an established presence you would be confused with.
Generate a shortlist
It is much easier to pick from forty options than to invent one from nothing. The username generator produces original handles in all the shapes above, from two-word compounds to short aliases. For a softer social-media style, the aesthetic username generator covers dotted, lowercase and cottagecore looks. For gaming, the gamertag generator keeps every name to twelve characters or fewer so it fits the console networks, and the Xbox gamertag generator uses the spaced and numbered shapes Xbox allows.
More name generators for profiles, servers and channels are in the online section.