I'm sorry to everyone out there who is happily a "blogger" or otherwise likes the word "blog" itself. But it stinks.
Back in the early days of blogging, in what one might now call the early childhood of the Internet the 1990s, they were called "weblogs" or a web-log. A log, written on the web. Much like a travelog or whatever. A very, very early Internet naming convention. Mail that is electronic? E-Mail! Brilliant. On writing this I realize that "Internet" is probably itself a compound word. "Inter" and "network", "network" itself also being a compound of "net" and "work". Though, those are a little more complicated in form and meaning than the stupidly simple "email" and "blog".
Email, as a word itself, is fine though. Mail is common and understood and has a neutral to pleasing sound alone, "E" is the most commonly used letter in English and also has a nice pleasing sound. "Web" and "Log" are not as universally neutral-to-pleasant separately, and not together either. I mean, "web" sounds fine on it's own. The "w" sound is smooth, and you've got that pleasant "e" sound, and a "b" sound is also a good sound. Log is fine when you're describing or noting a log, like a fallen tree. Or a log-book, like you're a ship's captain keeping a log of the comings and goings onboard your vessel. It is a functional word, perhaps not beautiful, but functionally fine.
"Web" as a term meaning "The Internet" has somewhat fallen away. You just don't hear people talking about "The Web" quite as much anymore, even if they technically use it every day. It persists in the "WWW" of our URLs, but almost no one ever thinks about "WWW" meaning "World Wide Web" anymore, or at least not often (unless they're noting that it takes less time and syllables to say "world wide web" than "double you double you double you," which is true). So the "web" etymology is if not a little outdated at least a bit old-sounding. Sure, we say "website" still. I never said the word is dead, just not as prevalent as it was in the radical 90s when we were "surfin' the web" and such. But of course, even if "web" was still just as popular a term generally, that's the part that gets cut out in the shortened "blog"!
"Log" has never really been super accurate for what most people use "blogs" for anyway. I suppose I can concede that in the early days more people were "logging" aspects of their lives, like a daily or weekly journal of sorts. But to me a log is much more... technical. Like I mentioned above, if you're a ship at sea you probably have a log-book, and you record your cargo and the crew aboard your vessel. A "weblog" is then what? A list of the things you have on your website? The people who view your website? Remember "guestbooks" on early websites?
Okay I know I'm getting way too weirdly literal about the word "log". I get the etymology of the word, as I mentioned travelogs before, which is of course a long-standing and still relatively popular literary genre, and probably even more popular now as "vlogs" on youtube. I'm not going to get into "vlog," please don't ask.
Anyway, "blog" has only stuck around just because it was mostly accurate and short and catchy enough to just catch on in those days. "Weblog" got shortened to "blog" (first via someone being cheeky and saying "We Blog," get it? Cue vicious eyeroll) and that was easy to digest. It's shorter than anything else I can come up with off the top of my head like "Internet journal" or any shortened versions of that, or whatever. So I understand why the term endured to modern times and why it has such mass adoption as to not be questioned. A blog is just a thing, that is just the term for it. Like a tree is a tree and a rock is a rock, a blog is a blog and it shall not be superseded.
I just don't like the word. It does not have a pleasant sound or feel to it. I wouldn't know what else to call what I'm doing here, so I shall unfortunately probably just continue to use the word. Maybe I'll just say "my website" or whatever (hey, there it is again, "web"). "I posted a new write-up on my website" or some such nonsense. That sounds a tad silly to me also, partially because of the avoidance of trying to avoid the word "blog" when I'm linking to a website called "blogspot" that I typed and edited it via "blogger" and we all know it's a "blog."
This is such a stupid and petty complaint I do not know if I will ever post this, but it did feel kinda good to write about it. Actually, shoot dang that's exactly why I am going to post it. If I can't be stupid and petty on my own blog where can I?
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