The only issue I've had with my domain name was chosing my default email address: I did not like [email protected], so I went for [email protected] instead.

I've had it for more than 20 years. Funny story is that the hosting company keeps being bought, acquired or merged. I think I went through this process 6 times now which meant creating/converting a new account just in time to pay the yearly invoice.

https://www.toddgriffin.me/

So I manage to get my name.TLD quite easily (one of them was owned by a distant cousin until recently). I think [email protected] is pretty much the cleanest email address you could have. And I can spin other addresses for members of my family if needed.

I'm not sure why that would be seen as pompous. It is your site, why not have it associated with your name?

I'm lucky enough to have got <last>.<tld> many years ago as my surname isn't that common (though common enough that <last>.com was already gone). Not that I currently have anything hosted on it (I had a personal site with photos and such, but that long since fell to bit rot as life got busy) but it is still handy for email. I have plans to resurrect it for a small amount of "about me" stuff (on <first>.<last>.<tld> maybe aliased as <first>.<middle>.<last>.<tld> to) and to hang some techie/professional projects off (<project>.<last>.<tld>) when I get of my lazy arse and actually implement some of them instead of just thinking about it all.

Unfortunately, for most people <last>.<tld> is very much no longer an option though. For many <first><last>.<tld> is most likely already gone too. If not to an actual person using the domain, or holding it for future use, then to someone who wants to sell it to you with a 900% markup.

> Create an unrelated but brand-able name

This works. It doesn't even need to be meaningful given that most of the time people aren't really aware of URLs the way they used to be, and many brand names are not meaningful beyond being brand names anyway. Your content matters much more than the name, as long as the name isn't in some way inappropriate to the content. Heck, if you don't need the name for branding purposes just pick a couple of random words from the dictionary until you find a pair/triplet/other that scans nicely, and use that.

I'm not making my site for anyone other than me. Curious people who look at my email address can visit my domain if they want to.

first + last.slice(0, last.length - 2) + "." + last.slice(-2)

No clue if it's a good idea since I've never actually used it and the unusual TLD may throw people off (especially since it is the TLD for a country I'm not from and have never been to). I just thought it was neat splitting my last name across the "dot".