The Website Nobody Can Spell (Including Me, Occasionally)

There is a particular pause that happens when you tell someone your website's name. It is not a blank stare, exactly. It is closer to the half-second a cashier needs when you hand over a coupon that looks homemade. Then comes the question, always in the same order: 'How do you spell that?' and, immediately after, 'What does it mean?'

I have answered both maybe a thousand times since I started Rishece. The spelling is R-I-S-H-E-C-E. The meaning is: nothing. It is a made-up word. Six letters that sounded right at 11 p.m. when the domain search returned the best two-word verdict on the internet: available.

The Entire Naming Committee Was Me

People assume there was a process. A whiteboard. A focus group. Maybe a consultant with a lanyard. There wasn't. I typed candidate after candidate into a registrar's search box and watched each one come back taken, parked, or priced like a beach house. Then I typed a sound — a shape of a word, really — and the little green checkmark appeared.

The tagline came later: essays, odds, and ends from an unsettled mind. That is the honest description of what lives here. A word that refuses to settle turns out to be a decent frame for writing that doesn't fit a beat.

I would like to say I considered SEO, memorability, and the long view. I considered none of it. I considered the checkmark.

Autocorrect Has Strong Opinions

What I did not anticipate is how much of my life would become a spelling bee.

Email is the front line. My address starts with the same six letters, and Outlook, Gmail, and the little keyboard on my phone have each decided I mean something else. I have been Rishce, Rishece, Risheche, and, in one memorable exchange with a wedding photographer, 'Risheese.' Payment apps are worse. People who have known me for years still send money to a handle one vowel off, where it sits in digital limbo until I text them a screenshot.

Voice assistants treat the name like a foreign exchange student. Siri says it like a cheese. Alexa gives up and offers to call my mom. On a video call last spring, a colleague read my site aloud as 'RISH-uh-kay,' which I did not correct because she said it with such confidence.

The strangest part: I now spell the word in my sleep. I have caught myself spelling it to a barista who asked for a name for the cup, even though there is no earthly reason a coffee shop needs my domain. Muscle memory is a funny thing. Six letters and I'm off, like a dog who heard the leash.

Being Hard to Find Is Not the Same as Being Hidden

Here is the tradeoff, plainly. Nobody finds Rishece by accident. Search engines are better than they used to be, but a word with no history has nothing to rank. There is no competition for the name because there is no name to compete with. That is a strange kind of luxury. No brand police, no trademark letter, no one else's meaning to argue with.

In 2026, when autocomplete finishes your sentences and a search engine answers before you press enter, a name with no history feels almost antique. But it also means every reader arrives on purpose. Someone said the word out loud. Someone pasted a link into a group chat. Someone misspelled it in the address bar, hit enter, and got lucky. The result is a room where most people were invited by a person, not an algorithm. Small blogs do not usually get to feel that way.

I think about the early internet, when you found sites through friends and webrings and the back pages of magazines. Not nostalgia exactly — more like a reminder that discovery used to be social. An ungoogleable name accidentally restores a little of that. You have to be told.

The Freedom of a Word With No Baggage

The other gift of an invented name is that it promises nothing. It does not say 'daily' or 'finance' or 'wellness.' It does not lock me into a niche or a tone. If one week I want to write about a parking lot and the next about a diner with no address, the masthead doesn't flinch. The word was empty when I found it, and it stays a little empty, which means it can hold whatever the week turns out to be.

There is a lesson there for anyone starting something small. Legibility is not the only virtue. A name that's easy to spell is easy to forget. A name that makes people lean in, squint, and ask a question is doing a different job.

What It Costs

I won't pretend it's all charming. Business cards are a liability. Podcast hosts need a phonetic guide, and I have started including one, like a wedding invitation for a difficult surname. Verbal referrals come with a built-in spelling test, and some people fail it and give up.

But the ones who get it right are the ones who cared enough to try. That is not a bad filter for a website, or for anything else.

A Home With an Odd Doormat

Would I choose the name again? Yes, and not out of stubbornness. The spelling is annoying, the pronunciation is a negotiation, and I have lost more email than I can count to a missing E. But the awkwardness is also the point. This little corner of the internet is mine in a way a generic name never could be. It has a doormat that says something in a language only a few people speak. If you're reading this, you probably learned the language from someone. Welcome in. Wipe your feet. Try not to spell it wrong on the way out.