Pseudonyms

[resonant]

I've always been fascinated by pseudonyms. One of the things I loved best about Samuel Delany's Dhalgren (other than the sex, of course) was that everyone who came to Bellona got to choose a new name. So of course when I came to the internet, I jumped at the chance to rename myself.

Just out of curiosity (and because everyone's away watching television shows that I can't see, damn it), I've got a poll on how people feel about their pseuds.

I like mine OK, though sometimes I wish I'd chosen something more like a name, and I definitely wish it were easier to google it without getting ten thousand irrelevant hits.

If anyone cares to give me a comment explaining the origin of their pseudonym, this would entertain me to no end.





[Poll #457320]

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

My original pseud when I joined online fandom was Kass. Since that wasn't available on lj when I migrated over here, I appended another name to the end of it; I still think of "Kass" as my pseud, though, and "kassrachel" is just the variant thereupon that I use at livejournal.

I quite like my pseud, actually. It was the first 'net pseud I ever adopted, in college, on a BBS where I used to spend a bunch of time; as a result, it's a name I've answered to for years. I turn my head when I hear it called in airports or crowded places, even though it's not remotely like my RL name. :-)

[marici.livejournal.com]

I really liked being Typhoid Mary, but I stupidly used it as a main address / IM for my RL friends so I had to give it up. Marici is fine but not fun, you know?

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

I love my nick and wouldn't change it for the world, but I *do* have two problems--irrelevant hits (gee, you THINK?) and nobody getting the reference. :D (Sort of Gilbert and Sullivan, but actually via Kim Newman's Anno Dracula....)

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I've used a few pen names, the most famous was Sarah Bellum, but it wasn't unique and although it seemed funny when I first created it, it got boring very quickly.

I use other pen names now when posting stories about which I'm ashamed and don't want linked back to me. And considering the type of stuff I don't mind linked back to me, you can just imagine what that stuff is like!

[marinarusalka.livejournal.com]

My first pseud was Rusalka. I picked it when I had just entered H:tLJ fandom and was just starting to write smut. Then, when I started participating in BtVS fandom, I used Mariner because... well, actually, I have no clue why I used a different pseud then. Sometimes I just do random shit for no reason. So now I have to pseuds, both of which suit me very well, and I use them pretty much interchangeably. Sometimes I think I should pick one and stick with it, just so people don't get confused, but I can never decide which one I like better, and no one's complained so far.

[smaragdgrun.livejournal.com]

I like the accessibility of the reference (people who get it, get it) and the level of uniqueness (plenty of other pages come up first with the name alone, but not if you put it with strong slash references).

However-- when I picked it I never thought I'd actually ever *meet* another fan, and (argh!!) it's basically unpronounceable, even for people who *speak* German.

Which wouldn't be a problem if I just would have stayed home, never gone to a con, never met all my best friends... so I keep it.

[ainm.livejournal.com]

Because I couldn't come up with anything that really reflected *me*, being terribly uncreative that way, I decided to go with something from another language... "ainm" just means "name" in Gaelic. That still cracks me up :-), and it's so much my name that I kind of forget it isn't my actual name... the only problem is that almost no one knows that it's pronounced as AHnum. :-) I actually chose it before I discovered fandom, so I wasn't really worried about pronounceability... but I'd do it again anyway, I think...

[apetslife.livejournal.com]

"Pet" wasn't available on LJ, so I went with "a pet's life", which isn't nearly as neat.

I picked "Pet" because when I discovered fanfiction, I started writing in the Buffy fandom. The authors I really liked were using one-syllable names: Te, Jess, Lar, Kass, Kita (okay, that's two, but you take my point). Since I was and am Spike-centric, and 'pet' is one of his favorite sincere and sarcastic endearments, it just followed naturally.

I love my pseud. I never once considered changing it when I moved to RPS. And honestly, many of my fandom/RL friends call me by that name almost exclusively. It's handy for puns (my email is pet_the_vampire) and generally easy to remember and say.

[vampiresetsuna.livejournal.com]

=P

My pseudonym is setsuna. I've honestly used this one for 5 or 6 years, so long that it fits me as well as my real name. my lj is some dirivitaive there of given my curent interests (ie, vampiresetsuna was a vague anne rice reference back before her more recent writings, and fits well with my new buffy fandom ness). Origionally came from an anime, and there are lots of anime characters with that name, hense the lack of originality.

My other pen name that I use for :;caugh:: annonymous writing is semajyrrah. This one is a potterish name; it's harry james spelled backwards. Kinda original, i thought. Sema is an actual people name.

[reetchick.livejournal.com]

I do get irritated with my LJ name at times, primarily because I worry it gives the impression I'm - I can't think of the word I want. "Flighty," maybe? Hmph.

At any rate - The Reet Story (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reetchick/2070.html).

[nestra.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because I really like your pseud. My wish is that I'd chosen something a little more euphonious and something that, as you said, sounds more like a name. But I guess I never really imagined that I'd be going to cons and listening to people calling me "Nestra". It's a shortened version of "Clytaemnestra", which is certainly one of the geekier origins of a name, but at least I figured out how tired I'd get of typing "Clytaemnestra."

mostly OK

[mremre.livejournal.com]

My main problem was that 'mre' (rhymes with free =) is too short or too simple. Major problem grabbing the nick before others snap it up. Or I can't use it at all (hence my mremre LJ--which is mostly dead but hols are coming up so I might actually update). I've gotten rather adept at variations on a theme (my current fave is mreisse on my gmail account since it's fandom friendly but close to my RL nick).

Ages ago I used 'sirius' (i love the dog star) for spam avoidance--this was before Prisoner of Azkaban popularized it. Now I regret the spam-status of my sirius / sirius1 accounts on lycos. If only I'd known! Ah well.

[prillalar]

I love my pseud. (Which is Halrloprillalar, for people who don't know me.) I picked it back in 1997 when I first got involved in TXF fandom. I wanted a name that was distinctive and sci-fi flavoured but not TXF-specific. The only drawback is that nobody can spell it, even me, even now. *g*

The name is from Larry Niven's Ringworld novels. If you google "halrloprillalar" you'll see a lot more of me than you will of him, though. He's got to know I use the pseud -- I wonder what he thinks of it.

The personal nickname portion of my name is "Hal", which I like because it's easy to say and it's a real name so it doesn't sound weird when people call me that at cons. The "login name" portion is "prillalar" which is easier to spell than the whole deal and is never, ever taken anywhere. So I use it for email, LJ, my domain name.

All in all, it's worked out very well. Even if you can't spell Halrloprillalar, you're very likely to recognize it if you see it again, so it's been great in a branding sense as well.

People sometimes ask how to pronounce it. I say HAL-r-lo-PRIL-la-lar, with the -r- as "ruh", not "er". (I know Niven says to accentuate that way, as two dactyls, but I don't know his opinion on the "r".)

[estrella30.livejournal.com]

I definitely like my pseud (but I had to put a number at the end like I'm guessing you maybe had to do *g*) I love the word and what it means, and I also kind of *like* that if you google the word itself without the number you get ninety bazillion sites *other* than my porn *g*

I don't really think I would change it, but if I knew it was something I was going to be known as and go to cons with people calling me it, I *might* have chosen something more like a name. I just wish the dope that has just plain estrella (some 17 yr old boy who hasnt updated his lj in 3 yrs) would email me and let me have the damn name without the 30 on the end *G*

[lenagirl42.livejournal.com]

I picked mine because my name is Colleen, and my best friend (and a few others) call me by the nickname Lena. I chose the number 42 because I was reading Hitchhiker's Guide at the time. Lena42 sounded stupid to me, so I added the "girl" in. I was about 13 at the time, so I'm lucky I picked the relatively inoffensive girl and not...princessangelbaby or something.

That was five years ago and I've never changed it. I use it for absolutely everything except for email and a few relatively "official" screennames (college websites and such). Sometimes I sort of wish that I could change it, but it'd be hard to do so and everyone I really talk to online just calls me Colleen or Lena anyway.

Where did your pseudonym come from?

[anathema666.livejournal.com]

"Anathema" suits me very well.

<-- ex-Catholic bisexual atheist

I use "Ana" for short in chat and email, and, as it is almost my middle name, I am enamoured with it (in fact, I answer to it in RL quicker than to my full real name... scary). I'm "anathema666" in LJ because "anathema" was already taken (as was "Ana_Thema" and every other variant I could think of at the time. The 666 is because my telephone number always has a 666 in it.

Sadly, I'm not as evil as I could be with a name like that.

[snitchnip-chill.livejournal.com]

I've been Chillie for nearly ten years now. I picked the name Chillie because I was cold when signing up for my first email account and I couldn't think of anything else.

The last name I chose at the time, James, was a guy I went to school with whose name was on a joint project we wrote and happened to be in the computer room. When we dated afew years later and then broke up, I moved that last name to a middle name and took the last name Gwynn, which is a play on my real last name. Why a pseudonym needs a middle name is beyond me, but I think my excuse at the time was that I didn't want to lose something that sort of felt like a part of me to that jerk, but I still needed a change.

I like the name well enough, it's been with me a long time now and I hope not to have to ever change it, though I do wish I'd chosen something a little less feminine. My only other problem is that it's frequently taken by the time I try to register for things, LJ for instance.

[thisisbone.livejournal.com]

I like my pseud. It's clean and spare, and I actually like that it's not really Googleable. When Te set me up with an LJ, "bone" was already taken, so my LJ became "thisisbone" instead. I keep meaning to go find that other Bone, but haven't ever done it.

I started internet life as J-Bone, after the character by the same name in Johnny Mnemonic. When I started writing, I dropped the "J-".

And, believe it or not, the sexual connotations of "Bone" didn't occur to me until someone pointed them out.

[panisdead.livejournal.com]

I don't know how well "panisdead" suits me, really, but I love it.

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

I started off in fandom about six years ago using my real, full name. Someone talked me out of that about a year later, and my friend and I put our heads together and came up with Sophia Jirafe. (Yes, the "last name" rhymes with giraffe, in my head. I was like, 18. And a dork.)

People still know me by my real name, if I've known them for a while. Because my real name is unusual, I often get people thinking the real name is the pseud, and Sophia is the real one. It's very, very confusing.

I use my real first initial (.m) in emails with friends, and just Sophia as a "business" name with people when I'm doing fannish business via email. My LJ name for years was double_helix, because I shared it with the same friend above, but now that it's sophia_helix I feel a little less disjointed.

Still and all, I wish I could have started online with an easy-to-spell, one-word pseud, and just let a few friends know my real name, like most people I know.

[gloriana.livejournal.com]

My pseud has a couple of puns in it. 'Gloriana' was a name commonly used for Queen Elizabeth I (who is a lady I have a lot of admiration for: a woman who ruled without a king in the days when no woman did). My real name is that of another long-reigning queen, so there was a connnection there :)

Elizabeth was also known as the Virgin Queen because of her spinster state; and hence Michael Moorcock stole the name for his novel, 'Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen'. Which was sort of the opposite of what I felt about slash :) I chose the pseud when I was just coming into slash, and I thought slash fandom was *so* amazingly wonderful (I still do, even if the gloss is worn off a bit). So I was the 'fulfill'd Queen' :) And I 'gloried' in the whole thing.

Then add to that the fact that my isp at the time was virgin.net, and it was inevitable :) I now have the domain virginqueen, so I don't think I'll be changing it for awhile yet.

[sage]

I also think resonant is lovely and reflects the musicality of your writing. You've got great rhythm in your fic and I love how your long stories build to a resounding, multi-tonal climax.

I'm mostly okay with using Sage/Sageness (Sage was taken, and I kind of wish I'd gone for something more poetic than sageness, but oh well.). "Sage" is a RL nickname I've had for ten or twelve years, and for a LONG while more people called me Sage than used my given name. I love that it's a noun, a verb, and an adjective; a plant and a profession; an herb and a color. I worry a little that people at work may find it and I'll have to change nicks, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

I'm also convinced that I've misspelled euphonious, by the way. I don't care enough to look it up, but I care enough to let people know that it looks hinky to me.

[teot.livejournal.com]

Too many people in RL know my pseud, and for that reason I wish I had a different one, but it's too much trouble to change it.

[florahart]

No one ever mistakes me for a boy; I have about the girliest LJ name imaginable, what with it invoking flowers and bambi and (if you see heart rather than hart there) hearts.

Heh.

Yeah, "Flora" is my grandma, and "Hart" is derived from my other grandma's maiden name, so.

I'm sure--and I mean absolutely sure--they would be horified by what I do in their names, but they'll never know, so. Only slight downside: in the event I ever write a trashy novel, I shall have to think of another pseud for that, because this one would have been perfect. Alas.