Why Is It Called 'Blog'? — The Origin of the Term

Before there were blogs, there were “weblogs” — a term that sounded like something a lumberjack might use. Then someone made a joke, broke the word in half, and the entire internet adopted the result. The story of how “blog” got its name is a case study in accidental branding.

The Story

In December 1997, Jorn Barger, a writer and programmer, was running a website called “Robot Wisdom” where he curated links and commentary about internet culture. He needed a name for what he was doing — posting a chronological log of his travels through the web. He coined the term “weblog” — a combination of “web” and “log” — to describe it.

The term caught on. Other early web diarists began calling their sites “weblogs.” The practice was called “weblogging.” It was a perfectly reasonable name for what it described. But the word was about to be broken in two.

In 1999, Peter Merholz, a user experience designer, posted a sidebar on his personal site where he jokingly broke the word “weblog” into “we blog.” The phrase “we blog” had a dual meaning — it could be read as “we blog” (we log the web) or “we blog” (we are a blog). The nonsense syllable “blog” was playful, catchy, and infinitely more marketable than “weblog.”

How It Evolved

The shortened form “blog” spread like wildfire. By the end of 1999, Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan had launched Pyra Labs’ Blogger, a platform that made creating a blog as easy as filling out a form. The word “blog” was baked into the product name. Other platforms like LiveJournal, TypePad, and WordPress followed.

The term evolved rapidly. “Blog” became a noun (the website), a verb (“I blog”), and the foundation of an entire ecosystem: bloggers, blogosphere, blogroll, microblogging. The term “weblog” retreated to the background, used only by historians of the early internet and people trying to sound formal.

Merholz’s joke had inadvertently created one of the most recognizable tech terms in the world. The double meaning of “we blog” — the collective, collaborative nature of the activity — turned out to be a perfect description of what blogging became: a global conversation.

Did You Know?

Peter Merholz has said he initially felt silly about the term “blog” and wasn’t sure it would stick. Evan Williams almost named Blogger “Pyra” before settling on the more descriptive name. The term “weblog” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003, along with “blog” and “blogger.” Microblogging services like Twitter and Tumblr later extended the concept to shorter-form content.

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