So you’re getting started in the porn industry. One of the earliest questions you should try and figure out is what your porn name should be.
But what makes a good porn star name?
When you were young, you may have played the childhood game that suggests you should combine your first pet with the street you grew up on to find yours. (In my case, it’s Bailey Bryant.)
But the truth is, most names just sound too porn-ish.
So, what makes a porn name work?
A porn name must be commercially appealing but it must also be easy to spell and should effectively represent the performer since, depending on potential popularity, this could be how they’ll be recognized by the masses.
Take, for instance, some major names in porn that you’ve probably heard of. Jenna Jameson, Alexis Texas, Sunny Leone, Joanna Angel and Lisa Ann. Female porn star names often subtly or not-so-subtly indicate aspects of a performer’s sexuality or physical characteristics, using puns, tongue-in-cheek allusions or direct references to famous porn stars of the past. They can be serious or funny, sultry or playful, original or generic. In the straight and gay porn world, men tend to go for hyper-masculinity. Famous male performers include Nick Manning, Francois Sagat, Jack Lawrence, Lexington Steele, Dale Dabone and Tyler Knight.
The internet has forced everyone to re-think the way porn stars name themselves. Today, domain names have influence over what an adult film star will choose to be called. Names are well thought out and performers understand the value of websites, they understand the value of social media. They know that names need to be easy to remember and easy to find.
So, when you’re thinking about what your name should be, you should take into consideration that it should be easy to spell, sound something like a *real name* (without using YOUR real name!), and not have any unusual characters in it (such as the apostrophe in Kim O’Toole), which might make it difficult for people to search for you, or may be difficult to represent in a website domain name.
Some tips:
- Make your name sound like a real name, or close to it.
- Generally, you’ll want a First Name, plus a Last Name, with a space between them.
- Don’t make the name too long, it will have an impact on length of domain names, watermarks, and more.
- The more unusual the spelling, the less likely people will be to get it right when they try and search for your work online. Try not to veer too far from normal-sounding names.
- Don’t use your real name. Duh.
Good luck choosing your own porn name!
