How Much Is Your Last Name Worth?

Friday, March 7th, 2008
by George Appiah

Mine is apparently worth US$5,000. That’s the price the poor fellow who owns the domain name “appiah.com” is asking for at BuyDomains.com. The other two generic flavours “appiah.org” and “appiah.net” are owned by another Appiah, Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University.

While I’m glad I own my name [georgeappiah.com], I obviously cannot share this with my family, if I ever happen to have one. So I was hoping to grab the last name, but it looks like was too late to the game. Actually I didn’t expect this generic domain name to be available, and I was willing to buy it, if the price was right. But US$5,000 does not smell right at all to me.

Of course, some domain names have sold for millions of dollars (“sex.com” reportedly sold for 2m), but I didn’t know my last name was this valuable