FanPost

Hogs Haven Name History

Since the Redskins are changing their names, I thought I'd give a short, uninteresting history of this website's name (Hogs Haven).

When the SB Nation NFL fan sites were in their infancy, SBN would recruit writers, let them pick and submit potential website names, and then pare it down. Incredibly I found the original list of website names for this blog from July 2006 email that I sent to SBN. Here they were:

skinspatrol.com
skinsaneasylum.com
dailyskinsanity.com
skinsaneblog.com
theskinsaneasylum.com
redskinned.com
redskindeep.com
skinsdeep.com
bloggingthehogs.com
hogsblogger.com
hogetteswelcome.com
offthebeatenwarpath.com
braveonthewarpath.com
hail2theredskins.com
skinsidethe20.com
skinszone.com
intheskinszone.com
circlingthewagons.com
webskinsnation.com
hogshaven.com
washingtonwebskins.com
skinsider.com
skinswatch.com
skintheredzone.com

I was certain that Skinsaneasylum was a winner, but SBN narrowed it down to:

bloggingthehogs
skinsidethe20
hogshaven

Blogging the Hogs suffered from being derivative of the Dallas Cowboys blog (BTB predated Hogs Haven), although I thought that would help with rivalry chatter. I thought Skinsidethe20 "sounded too much like a porn website" (and probably helped explain why several of the entries were not available on Godaddy). Path of least resistance was Hogs Haven.

Hogs Haven grew on me immensely, but in hindsight I sort of like bloggingthehogs better. We definitely dodged a bullet by not having anything "skins" related, given the current zeitgeist. Maybe decades from now, after society has determined that eating pigs is morally impermissible and that references to Hogs is too painful, even this website will have to change its name.

I hope I don't have to change my handle.