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I agree with this 100% but you should also see the confusion among non-technical people when my spouse gives them her firstname@lastname.com email address (a to

I agree with this 100% but you should also see the confusion among non-technical people when my spouse gives them her firstname@lastname.com email address (a totally valid inbox on a server that I run, I run our own authoritative DNS and choose where to set the MX, etc). She works in a non-technical field and some percentage of people simply can't grasp the concept that an ordinary person owns their family name as a domain name.

TheFreim 5y ago
I made the mistake of having a domain hack with my last name for my personal address, really hard to explain to people and it'd be too annoying to move away from now.
batiudrami 5y ago
I have run into this issue too. My Gmail account was challenging to say over the phone/in person and I wanted a platform agnostic email address so I grabbed firstlast.co but it often takes some reassurance that yes, that is my real email address.
- walrus01 5y ago
  part of your problem might be with the .co , since outside of tech industry circles or people who are actually Colombian, it's rare and weird. I bet you'd halve the problem or more if it was a .net or similar.
  - batiudrami 5y ago
    .co is actually fine usually as people in Australia are familiar with .co.uk and .co.nz (even though the “co” means different things in those contexts) I share a name with a US Governor which is great for keeping my teenage internet activity buried in search results but made it tricky to find a suitable domain name.
  - matt_heimer 5y ago
    I own osdev.(com|net|org) and I've experimented with using different email addresses over many years. The .net and .org TLDs still cause a lot of confusion. I'd guess that .edu is questioned the least after .com. But even .com addresses from non-common domains cause people to question them. wildrabbitmonkey1971z@gmail.com - no problem. matt@osdev.com - I'm sorry, can you repeat that for the forth time? I've experimented with other domains using common English words and its no better. I still like to use a personal domain to register with most sites but if I have to give someone an email address over the phone its going to be a common email hosting service that forwards to my real email.
ftio 5y ago
I feel you. I have a two letter domain and constantly have to explain that “Yes, that’s it.” when they want to add an extra .com on the end.
- walrus01 5y ago
  if you own a two letter .com or .net or something, and not some new gTLD, you should probably sell it for a fat stack of cash... unless you have a very compelling use for it.
  - JadoJodo 5y ago
    I suspect they meant the .<gg|in|co> part is two letter.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  Are you saying you own your own tld?
  - walrus01 5y ago
    I think they're saying they own a two letter domain , which if it's a .com is probably worth enough money to sell, put into a S&P 500 index fund, and retire. https://dofo.com/blog/two-letter-com-domain-names/ https://dofo.com/blog/two-letter-com-domain-names/ If it's a two letter domain at some new esoteric recently created gTLD, quite a lot less.
    - twobitshifter 5y ago
      Since they said they drop the .com after, the only thing I could think of is that they gave a top level domain and can just mail directly to it. For example alex@arpa See: https://serverfault.com/questions/721927/can-you-have-an-email-address-with-only-the-top-level-domain-as-the-domain-part#721929 https://serverfault.com/questions/721927/can-you-have-an-ema...
- davchana 5y ago
kgwxd 5y ago
The second letter in my first name is an 'a', the last 3 letters of my last name are 'ski'. When the .ski domain finally became available for general use, I jumped to register [last 3 of first name][first 7 of last name].ski so I could have [1st]@(for the 'a')[middle part].ski. It looked cool as hell to me but confusing as hell to anyone else and it was impossible to verbally communicate.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  same, it's better than a business card, especially among tech circles "just email me at 'my name at my last name but dot ski'" super memorable and shows you know your way around the stack :)
  - igetspam 5y ago
    I have a gmail account that I grabbed when I worked at Google that reads very fake. It might as well be spam@ (it's not). Geeks love it. Normal people think I'm lying. (Geeks think I'm lying too but I can prove it, so they quickly more to the loving it phase.) I often get replies from support teams quickly because they want to see if it's fake.
    - cvwright 5y ago
      Let me guess: root?
      - walrus01 5y ago
        postmaster? admin?
    - jareklupinski 5y ago
      email@gmail?
- aluminum96 5y ago
  Do you have issues with spam filters blocking your emails? I've heard that any non `.com` email is a mess from a deliverability perspective.
dottedmag 5y ago
Even worse if you use this domain as a way to track (and block) incoming e-mails. People at <FOO LTD> often have a hard time accepting that e-mail might actually be <foo>@<my name>.
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Tried this in person once when signing up to the companies club or a discount. Once.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I do this all the time, albeit with a qmail x-foo@ alias, and just straight up own it - "I sort my email so I can tell who sells my address". I've never really had a problem.
    - superleo2020 5y ago
      Once tried to explain to Rapid7 (a security company no less) they had leaked/sold my email address, as per the system you describe. Couldn't get through to anyone that understood.
- aaronharnly 5y ago
  Ha yes, I get some inquisitive looks. I usually preface by saying, “This will sound strange, but I use a different email address with every company I interact with. So, it will be <foo>@…”
mgcross 5y ago
I initially set up my email on my domain as me@mydomain.com. I don't really remember why, but it was a really stupid idea as it's so hard to explain to people. "It's me at mydomainname.com. Well, no, not my first name, it's emmm eee at..."
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  Same. I have now switched to "hey" and it works much better. The part that trips a lot of people (and some really bad email validators out there) up is that my TLD is .gg which is still pretty uncommon. Most of the times I get asked if I'm sure I didn't mean "hey@vlad.gr" or "hey@vlad.gov".
- saghm 5y ago
  I generally use `mail@` for whenever I want something generic, and otherwise use some suitable prefix for whatever service I'm using. I've been surprised and pleased that whenever I have to end up talking to a human on the phone for something, telling them my email is <their service name>@<my domain> doesn't seem to faze them.
  - marssaxman 5y ago
    I use the same system! So far so good; I have had a couple of occasions where someone seemed to be momentarily taken aback, but it's never been a real problem.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  I seemed to do ok in that respect with me@firstnamelastname.com, except that both my first and last names are often enough misspelled that I gave up and give out one of my other domains for email now.
- perilunar 5y ago
  Just tell them firstname@... and redirect it. I own my domain and apart from my partner and kids emails I get everything else redirected to my personal address. A surprising amount of spam is emailed to sales@... and admin@...
dustintrex 5y ago
My email is first@last.name. The ".name" domain is oddly underused and often throws people for a loop.
- walrus01 5y ago
  I think the vast majority of people don't recognize 98% of the new/novel gTLDs when they see them. Using an arbitrarily chosen noun: If I have a taco truck and I put in giant font on the side BURRITO.NET or BURRITO.COM People will immediately get that it's a website. If I put BURRITO.NAME on it, very few will.
codazoda 5y ago
For the opposite of a lot of these, I use first@firstlast.com and nobody has any trouble with that. I usually get a little sideways glance since I didn’t say a work place or gmail, but they rarely ask me to clarify.
slowhand09 5y ago
My friend named Dot wanted dot@dot.com. Couldn't get that...
mro_name 5y ago
My mother made all her calls from a public phone box (Rural Bavaria in the 80s). Having your own phone number was as unusual then as a domain might be for some today. Spread the word and show it!
davchana 5y ago
A hotel chain manager was adamant that my first@last.net was missing gmail.com or yahoo.com or hotmail.com. I pointed out that his official email his F.Last@hotel.cctld has no .com or gmail yahoo. He said, oh its corporate, its allowed. Not allowed for persons. I was speechless.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  I would take some private delight in messing with such a person by instructing them to use <gmail@myname.com>.
Jarwain 5y ago
My last name is "to" and my first name has a non-standard spelling, so I managed to get me@firstname.to Communication of it isn't too bad. I usually say "the word me at {first name}.to, spelled the same way as my name" (since oftentimes they ask for my name first). Other times I literally just spell it out.
francisofascii 5y ago
Do you use a service to handle spam and a GUI interface?

TheFreim 5y ago

I made the mistake of having a domain hack with my last name for my personal address, really hard to explain to people and it'd be too annoying to move away from now.

batiudrami 5y ago

I have run into this issue too. My Gmail account was challenging to say over the phone/in person and I wanted a platform agnostic email address so I grabbed firstlast.co but it often takes some reassurance that yes, that is my real email address.

walrus01 5y ago
part of your problem might be with the .co , since outside of tech industry circles or people who are actually Colombian, it's rare and weird. I bet you'd halve the problem or more if it was a .net or similar.
- batiudrami 5y ago
  .co is actually fine usually as people in Australia are familiar with .co.uk and .co.nz (even though the “co” means different things in those contexts) I share a name with a US Governor which is great for keeping my teenage internet activity buried in search results but made it tricky to find a suitable domain name.
- matt_heimer 5y ago
  I own osdev.(com|net|org) and I've experimented with using different email addresses over many years. The .net and .org TLDs still cause a lot of confusion. I'd guess that .edu is questioned the least after .com. But even .com addresses from non-common domains cause people to question them. wildrabbitmonkey1971z@gmail.com - no problem. matt@osdev.com - I'm sorry, can you repeat that for the forth time? I've experimented with other domains using common English words and its no better. I still like to use a personal domain to register with most sites but if I have to give someone an email address over the phone its going to be a common email hosting service that forwards to my real email.

ftio 5y ago

I feel you. I have a two letter domain and constantly have to explain that “Yes, that’s it.” when they want to add an extra .com on the end.

walrus01 5y ago
if you own a two letter .com or .net or something, and not some new gTLD, you should probably sell it for a fat stack of cash... unless you have a very compelling use for it.
- JadoJodo 5y ago
  I suspect they meant the .<gg|in|co> part is two letter.
twobitshifter 5y ago
Are you saying you own your own tld?
- walrus01 5y ago
  I think they're saying they own a two letter domain , which if it's a .com is probably worth enough money to sell, put into a S&P 500 index fund, and retire. https://dofo.com/blog/two-letter-com-domain-names/ https://dofo.com/blog/two-letter-com-domain-names/ If it's a two letter domain at some new esoteric recently created gTLD, quite a lot less.
  - twobitshifter 5y ago
    Since they said they drop the .com after, the only thing I could think of is that they gave a top level domain and can just mail directly to it. For example alex@arpa See: https://serverfault.com/questions/721927/can-you-have-an-email-address-with-only-the-top-level-domain-as-the-domain-part#721929 https://serverfault.com/questions/721927/can-you-have-an-ema...
davchana 5y ago

kgwxd 5y ago

The second letter in my first name is an 'a', the last 3 letters of my last name are 'ski'. When the .ski domain finally became available for general use, I jumped to register [last 3 of first name][first 7 of last name].ski so I could have [1st]@(for the 'a')[middle part].ski. It looked cool as hell to me but confusing as hell to anyone else and it was impossible to verbally communicate.

jareklupinski 5y ago
same, it's better than a business card, especially among tech circles "just email me at 'my name at my last name but dot ski'" super memorable and shows you know your way around the stack :)
- igetspam 5y ago
  I have a gmail account that I grabbed when I worked at Google that reads very fake. It might as well be spam@ (it's not). Geeks love it. Normal people think I'm lying. (Geeks think I'm lying too but I can prove it, so they quickly more to the loving it phase.) I often get replies from support teams quickly because they want to see if it's fake.
  - cvwright 5y ago
    Let me guess: root?
    - walrus01 5y ago
      postmaster? admin?
  - jareklupinski 5y ago
    email@gmail?
aluminum96 5y ago
Do you have issues with spam filters blocking your emails? I've heard that any non `.com` email is a mess from a deliverability perspective.

dottedmag 5y ago

Even worse if you use this domain as a way to track (and block) incoming e-mails. People at <FOO LTD> often have a hard time accepting that e-mail might actually be <foo>@<my name>.

austhrow743 5y ago
Tried this in person once when signing up to the companies club or a discount. Once.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I do this all the time, albeit with a qmail x-foo@ alias, and just straight up own it - "I sort my email so I can tell who sells my address". I've never really had a problem.
  - superleo2020 5y ago
    Once tried to explain to Rapid7 (a security company no less) they had leaked/sold my email address, as per the system you describe. Couldn't get through to anyone that understood.
aaronharnly 5y ago
Ha yes, I get some inquisitive looks. I usually preface by saying, “This will sound strange, but I use a different email address with every company I interact with. So, it will be <foo>@…”

mgcross 5y ago

I initially set up my email on my domain as me@mydomain.com. I don't really remember why, but it was a really stupid idea as it's so hard to explain to people. "It's me at mydomainname.com. Well, no, not my first name, it's emmm eee at..."

mynameisvlad 5y ago
Same. I have now switched to "hey" and it works much better. The part that trips a lot of people (and some really bad email validators out there) up is that my TLD is .gg which is still pretty uncommon. Most of the times I get asked if I'm sure I didn't mean "hey@vlad.gr" or "hey@vlad.gov".
saghm 5y ago
I generally use `mail@` for whenever I want something generic, and otherwise use some suitable prefix for whatever service I'm using. I've been surprised and pleased that whenever I have to end up talking to a human on the phone for something, telling them my email is <their service name>@<my domain> doesn't seem to faze them.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  I use the same system! So far so good; I have had a couple of occasions where someone seemed to be momentarily taken aback, but it's never been a real problem.
technothrasher 5y ago
I seemed to do ok in that respect with me@firstnamelastname.com, except that both my first and last names are often enough misspelled that I gave up and give out one of my other domains for email now.
perilunar 5y ago
Just tell them firstname@... and redirect it. I own my domain and apart from my partner and kids emails I get everything else redirected to my personal address. A surprising amount of spam is emailed to sales@... and admin@...

dustintrex 5y ago

My email is first@last.name. The ".name" domain is oddly underused and often throws people for a loop.

walrus01 5y ago
I think the vast majority of people don't recognize 98% of the new/novel gTLDs when they see them. Using an arbitrarily chosen noun: If I have a taco truck and I put in giant font on the side BURRITO.NET or BURRITO.COM People will immediately get that it's a website. If I put BURRITO.NAME on it, very few will.

codazoda 5y ago

For the opposite of a lot of these, I use first@firstlast.com and nobody has any trouble with that. I usually get a little sideways glance since I didn’t say a work place or gmail, but they rarely ask me to clarify.

slowhand09 5y ago

My friend named Dot wanted dot@dot.com. Couldn't get that...

mro_name 5y ago

My mother made all her calls from a public phone box (Rural Bavaria in the 80s). Having your own phone number was as unusual then as a domain might be for some today. Spread the word and show it!

davchana 5y ago

A hotel chain manager was adamant that my first@last.net was missing gmail.com or yahoo.com or hotmail.com. I pointed out that his official email his F.Last@hotel.cctld has no .com or gmail yahoo. He said, oh its corporate, its allowed. Not allowed for persons. I was speechless.

marssaxman 5y ago
I would take some private delight in messing with such a person by instructing them to use <gmail@myname.com>.

Jarwain 5y ago

My last name is "to" and my first name has a non-standard spelling, so I managed to get me@firstname.to Communication of it isn't too bad. I usually say "the word me at {first name}.to, spelled the same way as my name" (since oftentimes they ask for my name first). Other times I literally just spell it out.

francisofascii 5y ago

Do you use a service to handle spam and a GUI interface?