Rombla

What’s in a name?

A little over a year ago, I was on holiday in one of my favorite places: Uruguay, South America. I was sitting in a café on the Rambla, a bustling boulevard along the coast, contemplating starting a new business. I was trying to come up with unique names that would have a URL and trademark available. The internet land grab has made this a frustrating task. It dawned on me that there were interesting words all around me and as Uruguay is just a side road on the web they may still be available.

I was in the beautiful seaside village of Piriapolis, founded by Francisco Piria early in the last century. I wandered over to the local internet café and quickly registered several domains that became our company and product names. So what about Rombla? It is a gringo variation on Rambla. I would like to tell you we changed the name from Rambla to Rombla because people had a hard time pronouncing Rambla. Truth be told, it was a twitter from Rafe Needleman. Back in April at the Web2.0 show, Rafe was kind enough to blog about our Alpha version. We were following his twitter when he mentioned “nice app but pity about the name. It sounds like NAMBLA.” A quick Google search later I decided we had to change the name. Rombla was available and easier to pronounce.. so here we are.

Tags: Piria rombla rambla name rafe needleman