Finding the perfect domain name to handle my emails

Hey everyone!

I'm brain-dumping my thoughts here for fun, but it might be a fun read, and who knows, maybe someone will have some neat suggestions.

Here's the deal: my kids are starting to be at an age where they'll need an email address. I don't want to create a @gmail for them because I don't know what the market will be in the future.

Ideally, having an email from a domain you own allows you to point it to anything. It can be @gmail now, and it can be @whatever in 10 years. This can quickly be done with a forwarding email service.

I have two requirements for this domain, but it's more complicated than it looks:

1. It must be easily pronounced. If you tell it to someone over by phone, they shouldn't make any mistakes while writing it.
2. It should work in English and French (I am French originally).

Point 2 is more arbitrary; I don't think my kids will need to be able to share it with English-speaking people, but I'd be interested in using it too, and I do.

Now, one problem I'm having is regarding my name. "Nicodeme". I believe it's pretty hard to pronounce as an English speaker, and in French, the "d" can easily be switched to "t", and the "m" to "n" when speaking over the phone. Moreover, it's frequent that people forget the last "e"...

So much room for mistakes.

Moreover, all the interesting nicodeme.{tld} domains are taken (.com/.net/.org/.fr)

Talking about TLDs now. Since this will be used for general purposes, it's not a good idea to use TLDs such as .app, .dev, and .co as they might confuse someone over the phone even more. I even thought about playing with my name, such as "@nicode.me", but again, non-technical people might get lost.

I think having a standard ".com", or maybe ".net" domain is good. Using the ".fr" is not that bad; It tells my origin.

Finally, about the domain name in itself. Here's what I tried:

• Removing all the vowels ; ncdm. The issue of pronunciating 75% of the letters is still present (n? d? m?)
• Adding a prefix or a suffix ; I think my name is long enough not to have more chars added to it.
• Mixing the name with "mail". It's one of my favorite approaches; Something like "nmail.com" (Of course, all the nmail.* are taken).

About the last point:

The thing I like about this is still having some privacy when I reach out to someone or subscribe to anything; My email ends with cnicodeme.com, and my full name is fully stated here. It's often the time I don't want to fill in the "last name" field and realize I've already spoiled it.
Having a more generic domain would remove this.

Also, including"mail" in the name might make it less obvious it's a personally-owned domain, which could help my kids not look too geeky at school.

So here I am, trying to find the best domain that represents my family and me, the best, available, easily pronounceable, works in both English and French, and not too obvious.

I'm still looking...

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Thank you for reading this post. It's very personal, but I think anyone can relate. I'm faced with the same issue whenever I try to think about the name of a new project, and I'm confident you feel connected too.

I'm still thinking about the perfect domain that would match all of the needs above, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to share them.