From JobRadar to Matchda — A Side Project Rebranding Story

I figured I'd just rename it later

Starting a side project, I picked the name without much thought. It's a tool that scrapes job postings and matches them, so "JobRadar." Intuitive, communicated the meaning instantly. I ran with that for months.

But as the project grew and the thought "should I actually launch this as a real service" crept in, the name kept bugging me. JobRadar was a name that describes a function, not a brand. Searching around, plenty of similar names existed, and no clean domain was left either.

Eventually I decided to rename it. JobRadar → Matchda. This post is a developer's record of agonizing over a name, not code. The technical domain-connection and OAuth redirect issues are covered in a separate post; here I'm focusing purely on "why and how I picked this name."

The limits of the name "JobRadar"

First, why I wanted to change it. Picking apart JobRadar revealed these problems.

Problem	Description
Feature-descriptive	"Job + Radar." Clear meaning, but that's as far as it goes. Doesn't extend into a brand
Generic	Way too many services start with "Job." Doesn't stick in memory
Poor extensibility	If features later expand into resumes/careers, "Job" actually becomes a liability
Domain	A clean .com was already long gone

Extensibility was the big one. Right now it's job-posting matching, but the direction I wanted was broader — "connecting people with opportunities" overall. But with "Job" baked into the name, I'd be locked into that box.

The meaning behind Matchda

The new name had exactly one condition. Carry the core value of "matching," but be a brand, not a function description.

That's where Matchda came from. I layered two meanings.

1. match + da — meaning "matching every job (opportunity) in the world." I attached "da" for the sense of encompassing everything.
2. The Korean word "매치다" (maechida) — carries the sense of the verb "to match." For Korean users, the name itself directly conveys what the service does.

Read in English, it's "match-da"; read in Korean, it's "매치다." I liked that the same name reads naturally and makes sense in both language communities. For a service aiming to go multilingual, this turned out to be a fairly significant advantage.

The criteria for a good name — the checklist I built

While picking the name, I put together my own set of criteria. Worth referencing when naming a side project.

Criterion	Question	How does Matchda hold up?
Memorability	Can you recall it after hearing it once?	✅ 2–3 syllables, short
Pronunciation	Natural in both Korean and English?	✅ 매치다 / match-da
Domain availability	Can you get the .com?	✅ secured matchda.com
Extensibility	Does the name hold up as features grow?	✅ centered on the value of matching
Meaning	Does the name alone give a sense of what it does?	✅ inferable from "match"
Uniqueness	Are there a lot of services with the same name?	✅ relatively rare

Of these, the one an individual developer most easily overlooks is domain availability. No matter how good a name is, if the .com is already sold or priced absurdly, it's hard to use. So I flipped my order to check the domain before settling on a name candidate. This prevents falling in love with a name first, only to be crushed when there's no domain for it.

💡 Tip: the moment a name candidate comes to mind, immediately check .com availability on a domain registrar site. Searching for the same name in trademarks and app stores at the same time helps avoid problems down the road too.

What needs touching when you rename

Renaming one thing turns out to be more work than expected. Here's the actual (or still-pending) list of what got touched.

1. Domain connection — registering matchda.com and wiring it to deployment (technical details in a separate post)
2. In-service brand name — logo, header, meta tags, OG image
3. External-facing spots — portfolio, about page, links
4. OAuth redirect URI — changing the domain also means updating the login callback (separate post)

This time, I first updated my backtodev portfolio. Changed the card title from JobRadar to Matchda, swapped the site link to the new domain, and added a line in both the Korean and English descriptions saying "originally launched as JobRadar, then rebranded to Matchda." It really hit me then that rebranding doesn't end at "I changed the name" — it's the process of cleaning up every single touchpoint where the changed name shows up, one by one.

Troubleshooting — things I ran into while rebranding

Situation	Concern/trap	Response
The old name was already baked in all over	GitHub repo name, image filenames, post slugs, etc.	Left anything with link-breaking risk (filenames, slugs) alone; prioritized swapping only the user-facing brand name
Users still arriving via the old domain	Links shouldn't suddenly die	Kept a redirect from the old domain to the new one
Traces of the old name showing up in search	Indexed under JobRadar on Google	Rather than rushing to erase it, let the transition happen naturally by accumulating new-name content

The core lesson: don't try to overhaul everything perfectly in one shot. It was safer to change touchpoints sequentially, so users, search engines, and existing links weren't caught off guard.

Summary

• JobRadar was a feature-descriptive name, making it hard to grow into a brand
• Matchda = "match + da" (matching every job) + the feel of the Korean word "매치다" → makes sense in both Korean and English
• Criteria for a good name: memorability · pronunciation · domain availability · extensibility · meaning · avoiding duplication
• For an individual developer, it's important to build the habit of checking the domain before settling on a name
• Rebranding isn't swapping a name — it's the process of cleaning up touchpoints one at a time

I thought writing good code was all that mattered, but making a service feel like an actual service turns out to start with "what do I even call this." This was the first time I'd agonized this long over a single name, but once I locked in Matchda, my own mindset toward the project shifted. I learned firsthand this time that a name really does set the direction.