Update: check the date of the post ;)

In recent years, Joost and Yoast have become less and less synonymous, to the point where it’s now downright confusing as to what people are referring to when they’re correctly pronouncing Joost’s first name and the company name. You’d almost start to feel thankful for those ignorant people who still insist on calling Joost “juiced”.

There are, of course, several ways of fixing such an issue, but most of the proposed solutions had a profound impact on the branding of the company and its ability to be found in the search engines. But then, last year, Jen gave me a great idea, she showed me that you can very effectively (not easily, but effectively) change your name. So I’ve decided, after a lot of discussion with my wife Marieke and my parents, to change mine.

Which is why I’ll henceforth be known as “Lucky”. But read on, there’s more. Because I’ve always felt slightly jealous for people with plenty of names, I’ve decided to not take one, but five names.

I’ll henceforth be known as Andrew Peter Ryan Iaquith Lucky de Valk^*. I’ll of course be the first bearer of that name in my family. The funny thing when you come up with a new name for yourself is that you can name yourself after someone you adore, or, multiple people, if you pick so many names. So I went with Andrew first, because that names me after two WordPress core committers at once. Peter and Ryan are also core WP committers. Lucky is actually for Matt, but it didn’t quite work with the acronym I was going for and “Lucky” is a quite apt description of what I’ve been over the years as well.

So, as the title says, with great names comes a great responsibility. I’ll try to live up to it.

^* I know Jaquith is spelled with a J, I just like replacing J’s with similar letters ;)

This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!