Name Game

What’s in a name?

A dadgumlot. When I team up with a client, my favorite thing to learn is why they named their business what they did. (PS If you’re struggling with naming - lemme help!)

Before naming Claiborne Creative, I toyed around with being called Clayside Creative for a while because the second part of my name is Clay (short for Claiborne), and I want to help small businesses put the work I’m doing for them on the side.

As in, I strive to be so good at my job, you truly don’t have to think twice because It’s on the side. Ya feel me?

While this desire still stands as the backbone to this company, when really studying and praying over what this business should/could be, I realized how long it has been inside of me… just waiting to get out. Years of working well in other fields, but knowing nothing felt quite right. Years of being the go-to for friends needing writing advice, editing and creativity on the spot. Years of gchat honing my voice. (Yep). Years of wondering what else was out there. And more recently, years of toe-tapping the water, swimming around, drowning some, getting water up my nose here and there, but finally going head first into the deep-end… and out of my comfort zone.

With all of this stirring, learning and growing, I feel like this business is my third child. My husband and I have two precious kiddos and I love their names, but there’s always been a little tug in my heart wishing I’d used my middle name, Claiborne, for one of our babes. Since this oven is now closed, it seems only fair this “baby” should carry the name Claiborne Creative.

Some of my favorite people in the world call me Claiborne (you know who you are ;). My other favorites call me Mom or Mar or Aunt Sis. Oh and MC— I get MC’d a lot. Used to kinda bug me back in the early 90’s when you know, MC Hammer was a huge thing, but now I’m down with MC. You can MC me anytime. And since we now live in a world where we need to justify literally everything, the reason I didn’t like being called MC Hammer was not because I didn’t love the guy. Hell, my mom let me buy a VHS of his music videos from a garage sale when I was about 7. Watched that puppy religiously. It had a lot of gun violence, and I distinctly remember a funeral scene, so you can maybe talk to my mom about letting me buy it, but I do think it’s where my love for old school rap started.

So that’s a plus!

Anywho, I didn’t love being called MC Hammer when I was younger because everyone that called me that looked at me like it was the first time I’d heard it. It got really hard trying to fake smile my way through it - and that’s another thing - I’m really bad at fake smiling. Real smiling though? I can get down with some real smiling. So let’s bring on the originality and real smile our way through working together.

So now you know how Claiborne Creative came to be. I’d love to learn the origin of your brand name or help you discover one!