I'm trying to take my blog, which is on wordpress.com's free version (so it looks like examplename.wordpress.com) and have it hosted as its own domain (ie examplename.com) but I can't find any solutions for preserving the subdomain name as my new domain name.

I'm very new to wordpress, and while I'm comfortable sifting through others questions and following guides, I haven't found any that work for me on this. On the wordpress.com site/dashboard, it doesn't say "examplename".com is an associated domain for my blog, so I can't transfer it like most answers have said, but I also can't create a new domain with that name as it says its not available.

Any and all help is appreciated! I'm trying to use a blog as a good way to keep in touch with family and also share advice from my own experiences, but figuring out wordpress and all this has been a separate hurdle.