From moerayo.com to writerwhocodes.com

If this were a big enterprise, it would have been a very expensive rebrand, complete with all the fanfare that accompanies such a move. But since it’s just me, I’ll take the storytelling route.

Sometime in 2024, I got bored and looked at my backlog. I thought it was high time I started working on the long-overdue task of consolidating all my works from dev.to and other corners of the internet into a single space that would sit somewhere between a blog and a portfolio. I shared more about the why in the building my portfolio with Astro piece.

I did it and launched the site under the domain moerayo.com, a word that held a lot of personal history. Friends who knew the backstory never asked questions, but whenever I shared the link with someone new, they’d often ask: “What’s Moerayo? Where’d that come from? What does it mean? What language is that?”

Moerayo backstory

The barrage of questions meant I always had to go into a long-winded backstory. The quick version of which is:

Back in my undergraduate days, my friend, Angel Grace scribbled “MOE” (a combination of my first three names) on the cover of a photocopied math textbook. Later, I found out from my dad that I have a fourth name. I strung all four together, and out came “Moerayo,” which in Yoruba translates to “I have seen joy.”

People would often praise my ingenuity. However, as I soon found out, even storytellers tire of telling the same story.

While it was a great ice-breaker, I grew tired of explaining the “why” every time I shared the link with someone new. I started wondering if it was time to find something that was both “me” and self-explanatory.

At one point, on my homepage mood board, I wrote, “a developer who writes.” I didn’t keep it because when I started curating my blog moodboard, it was true, I was a developer who writes. However, since then, I have transitioned into a career where development is a secondary role. The idea, however, stuck with me.

Insomnia

Fast-forward to one of my classic insomnia nights. As many incoherent thoughts floated around in my head, one question rose above the rest: What’s a name that is still me but also instantly makes sense to people?

I thought about what I actually do: I write and I code. That’s me, boiled down to the essentials.

I started playing around with names in my head. “Code & Quill”? It was already taken, and a little too poetic for me. Other combos were also quite clunky. Finally, I asked myself how I would describe myself most straightforwardly, and I said, “The Writer Who Codes.”

I dropped the “The” to keep it clean, ran a quick search on Namecheap, saw it was available, and bought the domain faster than I’ve ever bought anything.

What changes (and what doesn’t)

…so here we are.

The truth that you probably already know is, humans are wired for change.
Me? Maybe a little more than most. But evolving doesn’t really have a timeline or a scope. Sometimes it just means picking a name that feels closer to who you are right now.

And hey, in the grand scheme of rebrands, this is a small one. Nobody’s gonna throw a fit like with the Cracker Barrel logo. It’s just me, quietly picking something that makes more sense.

So, welcome to WriterWhoCodes.com. Still me. Still the same mix of tech posts, personal essays, and whatever else I feel like. Just now under a name you don’t need a whole history lesson to get.

And for those who’ve always known me as Moerayo, that name isn’t gone. It’s still mine, and you are still welcome to call me by it if that’s what you know me by.