Looking to optimize your Instagram business results?
There are many different steps you can take to do exactly that, but you’ve got to start at the beginning— that is, your Instagram username and bio. We’re going to cover all things Instagram username in this post.
Instagram has become a key element to almost every brand and business’s marketing strategy; it’s not uncommon, in fact, for accounts to start out as a personal account and even transition to a professional account over time.
This is especially true for influencers, creators, as well as the self-employed. So, how can your personal Instagram account serve you as a professional one?
Whether you’re turning your personal account professional or simply starting a new profile for your business, the first task at hand is to decide what your username should be. The username is the first thing that Instagram users will identify with your account, and you have to make a solid first impression.
It seems like an easy enough task, but choosing a great Instagram handle can be tricky. Many Instagrammers looking to gain some inspiration have been turning to a third party tool that can help— Instagram username generators.
The idea behind an IG username creator is to take a word or phrase and then create tons of different usernames that can be used exactly as-is, or even tailored by the user to their liking.
In this post we’re going to talk about why you need a good Instagram username, characteristics of a good username, as well as how to find one that works for you.
We’ll then discuss 14 Instagram username generators that are some of the best; you can try them out to get yourself the best IG handle possible. Let’s go!
How Important Is It To Have A Good Instagram Username?
Your Instagram username defines your brand; it’s the first thing that users identify you with, and it has to represent your brand or personality. Don’t make a bad first impression with a misaligned username.
It’s important that you have a good username, but it’s not going to be a make-or-break factor. Avoid offensive or disgusting usernames, but otherwise, your username isn’t going to be the thing that decides your Instagram success.
You can always change your Instagram username, so give it some thought, but don’t let it stop you from creating your account and getting your first pieces of content up. Even if you change your mind later, you can make that adjustment with no issue.
It’s not likely that people will notice a username change as you’re getting your account started.
Characteristics Of A Good Instagram Username
So, what makes a good Instagram username, anyway? While it seems that a good username is objective, it’s not really the case— not all usernames will work for all accounts. It depends on a couple different things.
For instance, if you have a strong username that is aggressive (i.e. unleash_the_beast), it may work perfectly for a fitness influencer account or a group workout team but wouldn’t work so well for a lifestyle blog or a restaurant account.
Focus not on what’s good, but what works for your brand. Think about what type of energy you want to transmit through your username; what personality are you going for and who is in your target audience? That’s how you’ll know if you have a good Instagram username or not.
Here are a few other things to consider.
No Nonsense
This is probably not a shocker, but don’t create a “nonsense” username like abdjgieu385. This isn’t going to bring you any new followers and people will probably write you off as not serious or unprofessional.
It looks like a spam account, and also, no one will be able to remember it! You want something that is catchy and unique, but not like this.
Readable
Your username needs to be readable, so you want to avoid as much as possible using repeated and/or double letters.
Even if your username is taken, and you think adding a few extra letters won’t hurt anything, having a username like unleeeash_the_beeeeast is confusing for users and they won’t be able to find it.
How many E’s in unleash? How about in beast? It’s too confusing and will likely be misspelled and undiscovered. Users may get tired of it and just avoid it altogether.
You may consider using double letters if you’re putting your name, like Amyy_Waldenn, and then it’s likely to be readable. If you have double letters in your name, like markkalen, you may consider adding an underscore for readability: Mark_Kalen.
Underscores typically help to make your username more readable, so it doesn’t hurt to add them in if you only have 2 or 3 words in your username.
Connected to Brand
The main thing you want to consider is that your username is a good representation of your brand and what your account is all about. You don’t have to go with your name or business name, but it’s a good idea to do so if your account is focused around a business or your own personality.
Not Too Many Numbers or Symbols
Finally, ensure that you avoid using a bunch of numbers and symbols. You don’t want your username looking like unleash12_the_beast55XxX.
It’s understandable that you may need to add additional elements if the username is taken, but beefing up your username with numbers and symbols will take away from the overall readability.
How To Come Up With A Good Instagram Username
All in all, keep your username focused on your brand’s mission, image, and personality. It’s likely that your username will be very similar, if not exactly, your business name.
For example, if your business’s name is Rick’s Famous Hot Dogs, you can use that as your username: ricksfamoushotdogs. People will likely look for that on Instagram to find you.
You can use different variations if you want, such as Ricks_famous_hotdogs, or ricksfamoushotdogsofficial, etc.
If you’re still looking for a brand name, however, you may not have something like this to use. Start by thinking about what your brand is about.
Create a list of words like adjectives and nouns that could be related to your brand. If you’re a fashion and beauty Instagram, for example, you may write down words like “hot” and “fashionable” and “shine.”
You could then use those words to create a username, such as shining_hot_fashion or fashionshine, for instance.
No matter what, make it memorable, easy to read, and logical that users would try to find you with this username.
If you are still struggling and just can’t find something that works, there’s another option— an Instagram name generator.
The Top Instagram Name Generators
Even though it can be a bit nerve-racking to create your Instagram username, the good news is that there are a handful of Instagram name generator tools that have been created to help you do exactly that.
We’ll go through a list of the top 14 Instagram name generators and see how exactly they can help. So that you can easily navigate our guide, we’re going to use the word “beauty” as our starting point for our Instagram searches.
We’ll then compare the results and the process of creating the username. Let’s get started.
1. LINGOJAM
A very simple and straightforward experience, LINGOJAM presents you with two boxes, one where you put your name or seed word, and one that will populate Instagram username suggestions.
While they did populate a lot of them, a lot of them were simply nonsense and didn’t mean much, although you could then substitute your name or other relevant words where the random words were.
It says that LINGOJAM “just generates a big pile of random Instagram name ideas,” and we agree with that statement.
2. Business Name Generator
Business Name Generator was a pretty solid option and provided a lot of options, but one thing to keep in mind is that these are free tools, so you may want to have antivirus software installed on your computer, especially if you’re not using a Mac.
There are a lot of ads and they may even prompt you to open a pop-up, so be wary of these free tools. As far as name generation goes, though, they had some interesting suggestions. You simply type your word in the box and then the results will appear.
Check out some of the results for the search “beauty;” there were plenty more even still.
The names were interesting and pretty unique, so we thought that they worked well. Beauty Blend, Allure Spark, and Beauty Rebel are pretty cool; you may have to customize them a bit as some of them may be taken, but their suggestions were a good starting place.
3. NordPass Username Generator
The purpose of NordPass is actually a password management tool similar to those of Dashlane and LastPass, allowing you to save your passwords and share access across multiple users.
The purpose of its username generator is to help you choose usernames that aren’t as vulnerable to hacking, not necessarily for Instagram specifically. Still, we gave it a whirl.
When you want to generate a username with NordPass, simply enter a word. You can also create some parameters such as the length of the name, if you allow random characters or not, if you want to use Leetspeak (replacing letters with numbers), and if you want your keyword intact at the end.
For our beauty search, it created some pretty good options, and it will even tell you whether or not the username is available or taken on a variety of websites, like Twitter, YouTUbe, Reddit, Vimeo, and so on.
Sadly, Instagram isn’t included on the list, but NordPass may offer a good jumping off point for creating your usernames.
4. Mookychick
One of the simplest options on our list, Mookychick doesn’t even ask you to input a keyword! You simply visit the site and let them know how many names you want them to generate (max 20) and they’ll create a list of usernames.
As you can imagine, this isn’t the best option if you’re looking for a targeted username that aligns with your brand; most of these usernames align with Mookychick’s branding.
If you can work with a random username and are simply looking for something unique and creative, Mookychick could work, but if you want it to be specific to your niche, maybe look at a different generator.
5. Jimpix.co.uk
When you use Jimpix.co.uk, you can create your username through using a target word as well as selecting a category. In addition, you can select the option Show Bells and Whistles, which takes the word you entered, reverses it, takes pieces of it, and does other random generations. We didn’t use it.
In general, the usernames from Jimpix.co.uk were some of the best options that we got from a generator; you could likely find something that you could use with this username tool, but again, you’ll likely have to customize the username a bit if the one you like is already taken on Instagram.
6. Names4Brands
Names4Brands definitely wasn’t a good choice, pretty much all of their usernames were gibberish and offered nothing of value for your profile. In fact, pretty much nothing makes sense on this website, including the tagline “Jackpot for Every Trigger,” and the really bizzare usernames.
You can enter 3 different words and it will create usernames based on those words; you can also input two words together through the custom setting, also letting you end with a vowel or end with a vowel + character.
Every single username provided by Names4Brands were unusable, so we were pretty disappointed!
Even the custom setting provided no good results. Skip!
7. Nameboy
We had higher hopes for Nameboy, but it doesn’t provide you with brand names or usernames. You’ll be provided with website names only. What’s more, the site has a lot of spam; once you hit generate, you’ll see a popup asking you to sign up for its partner site.
Even though it provides website names only, they could be usable as an Instagram account username if you got creative and adjusted it a bit. Regardless, the names were a bit generic and would definitely take some reworking to make them usable.
8. Sassy Captions
Sassy Captions username generator was specifically built for Instagram, but nothing set it apart from the other options on this list.
It has a short introduction and then you’ll see a place to input your “Nick Name.” We didn’t enter a nickname but entered beauty, as we’d done on the other generators.
It populated 5 different usernames:
- watupBeauty
- champBeauty
- bootycallBeauty
- watupBeauty
- geekyBeauty
We can see that the names are nothing interesting, with two duplicates, and really, bootycall!?! We were pretty shocked by these results. We tried it out with the keyword fitness as well, and it generated similar results:
- coolFitness
- atFitness
- weathermanFitness
- howtoFitness
- KingFitness
So, Sassy Captions generates only 5 options per keyword. You can try it out and see if you get inspired, but as-is, it’s not likely you’ll be using these suggestions.
9. Username-Generator.org
You’ll have one word to create the input for your username with Username-Generator.org, and you’ll also be able to choose your preferred length. Once you click generate, it will provide you with many options related to the search word.
There were some options that did seem interesting, but ultimately you’d still need to customize them a bit to make them work. Similar to Business Name Generator, most of the cool options are probably already taken on Instagram, so you’d have to add something to make them a viable option.
10. SpinXO Instagram Name Generator
SpinXO is similar to name-generator.co.uk; you’ll provide a few different input fields like your name, hobbies, description of yourself, things you like, important words, and numbers/letters. You can also select exact words, rhyming, or one word.
It generated a variety of usernames that were decent, nothing incredible. If you don’t like the names the generator comes up with, you can hit SPIN! to populate more usernames.
Compared to some of the other generators on the list, SpinXO provided a few that could work, so it may be a pretty good option if you need some help with your Instagram username.
11. Namegenerator.biz
There isn’t a dedicated Instagram username generator with Namegenerator.biz, but they do have a Twitter name generator, so we used that one for similar results.
You’ll be asked for a prefix and a suffix, creating the beginning and the end of your username. You can only create one name at a time, so it may take a while if you don’t get a great one on the first try.
Because you use a prefix and a suffix, the tool really doesn’t offer anything of value; you’re already basically providing them with the whole username, so you’re better off just doing it on your own.
12. How To Start An LLC Instagram Name Generator
A very straightforward tool, How to Start an LLC Instagram Name Generator gave us some pretty uninteresting options. You just have to enter a word and you can also enter a location if you’d like (it’s not required). You can enter 2 or more keywords.
It provided a lot of results (up to 80), but all of them were website name suggestions, not Instagram usernames. There were some interesting options that could be converted to IG usernames, like prettifiedbeauty or beautyfacade, but nothing too fantastic.
13. Nitreo
Nitreo has a variety of Instagram tools available, including a username generator. You’ll have five categories to input:
- A custom noun
- A custom prefix
- Adjectives (color, size, feeling, attitude, etc.)
- Choice between random, verbs + adjectives, verbs or adjectives, only adjectives, only verbs, or none
- Categories to select, such as male names, female names, animals, sports, and food
You’ll only be able to generate usernames if you provide your email address; this is a tactic that Nitreo uses to gain leads for their paid services, so it’s probably better to use a tool that doesn’t require you to provide personal information.
14. Name-Generator.org.uk
Name-Generator.org.uk is a username generator in general, not simply for Instagram, so you may find that this works for a variety of your needs. It’s the most detailed and in-depth generator of the ones we explored, so you may find something worthwhile.
Here are the pieces of information you can input:
- First, middle, and last name
- Gender
- Year of birth
- Two adjectives to describe yourself
- Location
- Occupation
- Something you like
- Whether you want underscores or dots
It will then generate a list using your different inputs. You could also create a totally random username if you so desire.
While it does come up with quite a few, some of them are not quality and they’re kind of boring in general. We’d use it if we had to but you’ll need to add some extra creativity.
Final Thoughts: Good Instagram Usernames
Creating an Instagram username that works for your brand or business can be a challenging task; while there are plenty of Instagram username generators out there, none of them were really up to par. We were left wanting more from all of the tools we tried.
Only a few of the 14 generators we tried actually provided usable results, and if they were usable, they were likely taken or needed additional tweaking. None of the tools showed whether or not the username would be available on Instagram.
What’s more, they seemed to be very scammy sites with pop ups or ads, giving us some doubt about how legitimate the service actually is. The final takeaway: don’t rely on an Instagram name generator.
You can use them to see what’s out there and get your creative juices flowing, but all in all, the tool alone won’t give you a solid Instagram username that connects with your brand. Your best resource here is your knowledge of your brand and your own ideas.
We’d recommend using either Business Name Generator or Jimplix.co.uk out of all of the ones on this list. The best names we found to come from Business Name Generator, with the most options as well.
Give it a try but at the end of the day, go with your gut and trust in yourself to come up with the right Instagram username for your account. Good luck!
