Nameboy.com is the original domain name generator started back in 1999.
I remember typing in lots of potential business ideas into Nameboy (donkey years ago) to check if the .com domain extension was available. At the time, a lot of them were! If only I had bought up heaps of names back in the day and parked them to sell sometime in the future i.e. today! I’m sure some early adopters/entrepreneurs got in on the domain name goldrush back then and have probably made a fortune from flipping domain names. So good on them I say! 🤑.
I’m not sure how many updates Nameboy has gone through over the years but I recently came across it again and thought I’d roadtest its search function and see what results it brings back in 2022.
So let’s get into it.
I typed in the words ‘building websites’ and it came back with the following results as shown below.
You can select the results to show you just the ‘extensions’ e.g .com, .co .blog or select the ‘generator’ option to show you words added at the beginning or end of the terms you entered e.g. the, about, my, world, online etc.
You can keep clicking on the ‘Show more results’ link below the list of results shown to see more possibilities to hopefully find something that suits your new blog/website or business idea.
We put the Nameboy domain name generator through its paces and came up with the following list of pros and cons.
| PROS ✔️ | CONS ❌ |
|---|---|
| Generates a list of word options you may not have thought of | Doesn’t use synonyms to give you more ideas |
| Shows you which domain names are available to Buy | Doesn’t add words in the middle if you’ve typed in two words |
| Takes you straight to Domain.com to buy the domain name if you click on ‘Buy’ | It only takes you to one domain registrar if you click on Buy rather than give you several options to select from |
| Shows you which domains are taken and takes you to the Domain.com’s WhoIs Lookup | |
| Simple, clean interface | |
| Easy to search | |
| You can keep clicking on ‘Show more results’ to see more name options |
Summary
Overall, I found the Nameboy domain generator easy to use with a nice, clean interface.
It‘d be really useful if they added a synonym words option to the search bar for those who aren’t natural marketing wizards/word meisters!
An extra bonus would be if they let you check if the social handles are also still available. But you can go to a site like Namecheckr for that.