954 Cool Instagram Names – Good Ideas For Girls & Guys

Note: This article was originally published on January 3rd, 2015. It has been updated with new information as of January 7th, 2020.

What’s in a name? If you ask me, there’s a lot. A name tells you someone’s culture, heritage, the decade they were born, their parent’s interests, and sometimes values. And in this modern age of self-identifcation, names no longer have to be things that are handed down to you by someone else.

Names can be self-chosen, opening the door to even richer possibilities of expression and communication. It is the first thing you notice or ask when meeting someone new and will be what you remember after leaving. This carries over into social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram.

Names are much more important in these spaces, because these are not only how people address you, they’re how people find you. Your name becomes your name, phone number, email address, snail-mail address (remember that?) all rolled into one. Of course, if you’ve got a social media account you’re primarily using for business reasons, you may want to go pretty safe, with a handle derived from your name or company.

But for the rest of us, the sky is the limit one what we can call our new social media profile. However, it can be tough to come up with good ideas if you’re not creative or a lot of names are too commonly used.  (Also, you’ll want to make sure it’s something you can remember, as forgetting this can cause problems.)

That’s where I come in with this ultimate guide to cool Instagram names for both girls and guys. I will walk you through tips for great names and secret strategies to increase the chance of being recognized by others.

“I wish my name was Brian because maybe sometimes people would misspell my name and call me Brain. That’s like a free compliment and you don’t even gotta be smart to notice it.” – Mitch Hedberg

5 Ideas To Cool Instagram Names

Let’s get into a few tips and tricks that can help you come up with your very own awesome ideas for your brand new Instagram name. These tips are tested and really do work. If you have other suggestions, feel free to comment below so we can know what works for you. Who knows, maybe the tips we get in the comments will be added to this article! Or maybe we’ll just learn about it once you go viral.

1. Be Yourself

It’s incredibly important for you to be yourself in whatever you do. Your Instagram name is the first thing someone will see when they view your profile or see your photo from a common hashtag they searched for.

Make sure you’re representing yourself in your true light and not putting out a fake image just because you think other people would like it.

MySpace (remember that, too?) was loaded with carefully cultivated profiles, carefully designed, not to reflect an individual, but to get the most likes. As a result, everything began to look the same, and MySpace has all but disappeared fro the landscape.

These days, people want a bit more sincerity from their social media profiles. Think about celebrity accounts: we already see the celebrities on TV or in the movies, we know the image, we see just how carefully they present themselves in order to stay marketable. So we don’t need to follow them on Twitter or Instagram in order to see that; it’s already there. We follow them to see the other side: the human side that goes grocery shopping or gets caught in traffic.

From the common saying, “do you” and these things will turn out ok. Follow your heart and trust that people want to get to know your true personality.

2. Get Around Unavailable Names

There are a few tricks to get around unavailable Instagram names if you find that you can’t come up with a name that hasn’t been taken. This is incredibly useful for those accounts which mentioned earlier, may be entirely for professional purposes—accounts when you don’t want to get too cutesy with your name, because you’re trying to present yourself as a serious individual. These are often derived from your name. Of course, the old pattern (which we have already seen with emails) is to use your first initial and last name.

But everybody’s already had this idea, and all the first initial/last name combinations are taken pretty quickly. What can you do to get around this?

First, you can try to add a dot in the middle of your name. Ideally, throw it in somewhere that makes sense, either in between words or at a natural stopping point when saying the name.

You can also add a dash or underscore to the name to add variation if your first try is taken. The last option you can use is to add a few numbers to the end or beginning of your name. You could use the month you were born, your favorite number, your significant other’s birthday, etc.

Lastly, you can add variations on spelling certain things. Interchange letters so that they read the same but are spelled differently. For instance, you could replace “s” with “z” if the original Instagram name is not available.

3. Combine Adjective With Noun

A great strategy is to combine both an adjective with a noun. A ton of popular names use this technique. For the noun, you can use your own name, the name of a city, sports team, place, your favorite musician, etc. Then, for adjectives switch it up depending on your personality or how you want to portray your profile to be.

Here, we’re starting to get away from the purely professional (but let’s face it—totally sterile) sort of handles that come from just using your name. Now we’re getting a little bit deeper into choosing something that express you.

Some examples could be to combine my name, Trevor, with an adjective. For instance, my name could be Tubular Trevor. Play around with a bunch of different adjectives and nouns until you find one that you like.

4. Instagram Name Structure

It’s a good idea to include alliteration to make a name more memorable and roll off the tongue more easily. Another good structure tip is to make the name as short as possible, shorter names are easier to remember than longer ones and will help if someone is trying to recall who you are and find your profile.

5. Take Your Time

The last tip is to make sure you take your time thinking of a good Instagram name before just choosing the first one that comes to your mind. Thinking of a great name can take a while so you shouldn’t rush it. Just think, most new parents I know take the entire 9 months to come up with a baby name and sometimes still don’t even have a name chosen.

Bounce some ideas around with your friends and family, ask them what they think of a couple options. They will be able to tell you if it’s not easy to remember, if they don’t understand it, or if they think it’s cool or not. It’s always a good idea to get a second opinion.

954 Super Cool Instagram Names

Below is the culmination of a lot of work gathering together a master list of the best Instagram names out there. Some of these are taken, some are currently available.

Unfortunately, the only real way to see if a name is still available is to try it. But make sure you’re set on that one first or else you may get stuck using a name you don’t like very much.

Instagram in 2016

A little over a year later, and we’re back! Instagram popularity is still raging out of control, and more people are using it than ever before. All of our previous recommendations for finding an username that suits you still certainly apply, but as the Instagramming populace continues to get more of their life out and about in the digital arena, it’s become all the more important to set yourself apart as an individual.

After all, that’s why you went to all the work of finding a unique, suitable Instagram name, right?

That being the case, we have a few recommendations for ways that you can shape your Instagram experience to fit you and your lifestyle. We’ll also talk about changes that are coming to the massively popular social media app in the coming months; changes that will shake Instagram to its foundations, and hopefully for the better.

More Individuality in 2016

Instagram is turning into an awfully crowded place, and while it isn’t a bad thing, it’s forcing people to change their behavior when they’re using the app. We’re all still sharing the information, but it’s become increasingly important to market oneself when you’re posting images and videos that you want other people to see.

• More people use hashtags
• People pay more attention to who they’re following
• Instagram has become one of the go-to routes for self-promotion; you can hardly do without it.

How exactly do you go about “branding”  yourself in the crowded field of Instagram? It’s become important to have a voice. To have something to say. Above and beyond all of that? Have a name that is identifiable, recognizable, and can perform consistently with the images and videos you’re posting, alongside the voice that you’re choosing to use. It’s not necessarily a lot of work, but everything that we’ve said before about finding the right name that properly expresses who you are is doubly important, now.

Ch-Ch-Changes!

And along with this greater need for individuality is a slew of changes that are going to reshape Instagram feeds in 2016. How many times have you been forced to scroll through a huge feed of shared information, all because you want to find something from one specific source?

If you’re like me, it happens almost on a daily basis. Thankfully (though much to the chagrin of some users), Instagram is going to do something about that.

When the next update rolls out, gone will be the days of your feed always being given to you in chronological order. Instead, Instagram will be using new, smart algorithms to determine what sorts of information you’d like to see first, whether it’s something from a musician that you follow, or a share from your best friend. We’ve been promised that it will help to revolutionize our Instagramming, and reduce the amount of clutter that we’re used to seeing in our feeds.

That wraps up this guide on cool Instagram names for both girls and guys. No matter who you are, you can surely find a few names you like in the huge list above. Let us know if you have any other tips on coming up with your own names or if you really like one that is not listed above.

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