For people who use pseudonyms, would you care to explain why you chose yours? I don’t necessarily mean why you’re using a pseudonym at all, I’m more interested in why you chose the particular one you’ve got.
At long last, for the first time anywhere on the internet, the origin story of
(the name) “arundelo”!
After my parents picked “Aaron” as my first name, Mom asked Dad to suggest a
middle name. He suggested “Dale”, inspired by the last name of a news
correspondent named Arthur W. “Nick”
Arundel. (“Arundel” --> “Aaron
Dale”.)
When I got a Hotmail address, “aaron-brown” and similar usernames were
taken. Brainstorming for other options and remembering the above story, I gave
“arundel” a try, but that was taken too. I was spending a fair amount of
time with Esperanto at the time, so I
tried adding an “o”, which is what Esperanto nouns end with. “arundelo” was
not taken, so that’s what I chose.
Since then I’ve used it for many other websites and have never run into anyone
else who uses it. It does not function as a true pseudonym, since it’s dead
easy to connect it with my real name. I make no effort
to keep them separate.
ah-roon-DELL-oh and air-un-DELL-oh are both acceptable pronunciations. I
(mildly) prefer the first.
Mine is a math term, and my use of it dates all the way back to my religious days, when I thought of Catholic theology as a sort of orthonormal basis to my understanding of the world, helping me to see everything in its proper context. I may or may not have kept a blog with that title, which may or may not be both charming and embarrassing to my current self.
Every once in a while, I feel like I need a new identity, like when my personality has shifted a lot or when I notice an aspect of myself I’d like to express, but can’t merge with any existing identity. I then choose a name and go by that. So I don’t think of “muflax” as a pseudonym, but the actual name of the personality “muflax” in my head.
muflax is simply mu) + flax. I like the look of the name. It doesn’t have a preferred pronunciation (I don’t speak it unless absolutely necessary), but someone once thought it looked like “a Turkish medication”, so I recommend a thick Turkish accent.
For people who use pseudonyms, would you care to explain why you chose yours?
I use it elsewhere, including sometimes in real life. Here are the general reasons I chose the name:
You don’t want to choose a name that starts with a vowel, because they are hard to understand. For example if I said “I’m Arya,” or “My name’s Arya.” A good percentage of people would confuse where the name actually started and hear “I’m Marya” (Maria) or “My name’s Sarya” (maybe Soraya?). (I learned this the hard way a couple years ago with a different name) So you want your name to either be very common, or to start with a clear consonant.
Having an unusual name allows the person you are talking to to ask you about it. It allows them to start a conversation with you (“Daenerys? That’s an unusual name. Where did you get it?”)
Having a name that is an somewhat-rare reference to something interesting causes people to feel an instantaneous kinship with you if they happen to “get it”. Unfortunately, this hasn’t worked too well for me, as I’ve only met a handful of people IRL who caught the reference when I introduced myself.
As to what the reference is to, it’s to one of my favorite book series; “Game of Thrones” by George RR Martin. I actually like the character Arya better, but I’ve already mentioned why that name won’t work. Daenerys is a bad-a$$ chick with an army and dragons. It works. :)
‘rysade’ is just 6 characters I strung together one day. It is always a lower case ‘r’ on the front. I’ve used this name for so long, I basically consider it to be another way of giving my full name on the internet. To my chagrin, it looks like my old Xanga account is the first result from a Google search . . . that is very old.
The name has no particular pronunciation. I think of it as being similar to ‘xkcd’ in that Randall once explained that ‘xkcd’ is “a treasured and carefully guarded point in the space of four-character strings.”
You’ll find googling ‘rysade’ to usually return me, and also some very obscure pages in what I think is Russian if you go back far enough. If it is, or ever was, a word in any language, it is certainly not a common one.
Sometimes I’ll add an ‘h’ on the end. Echoing many other posters ITT, I use that version for roleplay characters on occasion. ‘Rysadeh’ has a pronunciation: rye-SAW-deh, with an emphasis on the ‘eh’ at the end as well, giving it an abrupt end.
I’ve used “Alicorn” practically as long as I can remember. The fantasy-geek variant on being a horse crazy little girl is being a unicorn crazy little girl, and I was rather enamored with my vocabulary too. Started using “Alicorn” as one among several screen names and eventually stuck with it over all the others.
I enjoy creating unusual characters and character names—I used to do this more, when I sometimes GM’ed at a .hack// roleplaying forum. Dorikka is just a name that I came up with for a boss creature. I liked the name, so I continued to use it. shrug
The only name use that originates from somewhere else is Miroki, which is a modification of Mitsuko Souma’s name from Battle Royale, a book that I really liked. I don’t think I’ve ever used Miroki as a psuedonym before, though, only a character.
All right. My name is a portmanteau of “Hansen” (my last name) and “Sandinista”. It’s uncommon, connected to my real identity, and (at least to me), amusing.
For people who use pseudonyms, would you care to explain why you chose yours? I don’t necessarily mean why you’re using a pseudonym at all, I’m more interested in why you chose the particular one you’ve got.
Pun on engineer.
That’s stealthy enough that I assumed it was your real name.
I’m not using a pseudonym.
At long last, for the first time anywhere on the internet, the origin story of (the name) “arundelo”!
After my parents picked “Aaron” as my first name, Mom asked Dad to suggest a middle name. He suggested “Dale”, inspired by the last name of a news correspondent named Arthur W. “Nick” Arundel. (“Arundel” --> “Aaron Dale”.)
When I got a Hotmail address, “
aaron-brown” and similar usernames were taken. Brainstorming for other options and remembering the above story, I gave “arundel” a try, but that was taken too. I was spending a fair amount of time with Esperanto at the time, so I tried adding an “o”, which is what Esperanto nouns end with. “arundelo” was not taken, so that’s what I chose.Since then I’ve used it for many other websites and have never run into anyone else who uses it. It does not function as a true pseudonym, since it’s dead easy to connect it with my real name. I make no effort to keep them separate.
ah-roon-DELL-oh and air-un-DELL-oh are both acceptable pronunciations. I (mildly) prefer the first.
Mine is a math term, and my use of it dates all the way back to my religious days, when I thought of Catholic theology as a sort of orthonormal basis to my understanding of the world, helping me to see everything in its proper context. I may or may not have kept a blog with that title, which may or may not be both charming and embarrassing to my current self.
Every once in a while, I feel like I need a new identity, like when my personality has shifted a lot or when I notice an aspect of myself I’d like to express, but can’t merge with any existing identity. I then choose a name and go by that. So I don’t think of “muflax” as a pseudonym, but the actual name of the personality “muflax” in my head.
muflax is simply mu) + flax. I like the look of the name. It doesn’t have a preferred pronunciation (I don’t speak it unless absolutely necessary), but someone once thought it looked like “a Turkish medication”, so I recommend a thick Turkish accent.
I use it elsewhere, including sometimes in real life. Here are the general reasons I chose the name:
You don’t want to choose a name that starts with a vowel, because they are hard to understand. For example if I said “I’m Arya,” or “My name’s Arya.” A good percentage of people would confuse where the name actually started and hear “I’m Marya” (Maria) or “My name’s Sarya” (maybe Soraya?). (I learned this the hard way a couple years ago with a different name) So you want your name to either be very common, or to start with a clear consonant.
Having an unusual name allows the person you are talking to to ask you about it. It allows them to start a conversation with you (“Daenerys? That’s an unusual name. Where did you get it?”)
Having a name that is an somewhat-rare reference to something interesting causes people to feel an instantaneous kinship with you if they happen to “get it”. Unfortunately, this hasn’t worked too well for me, as I’ve only met a handful of people IRL who caught the reference when I introduced myself.
As to what the reference is to, it’s to one of my favorite book series; “Game of Thrones” by George RR Martin. I actually like the character Arya better, but I’ve already mentioned why that name won’t work. Daenerys is a bad-a$$ chick with an army and dragons. It works. :)
Unfortunately, it makes you essentially impossible to google. (It may also be a feature, of course.)
Alicorn and I were both immediately inclined to like you when you started commenting, due to the name =)
‘rysade’ is just 6 characters I strung together one day. It is always a lower case ‘r’ on the front. I’ve used this name for so long, I basically consider it to be another way of giving my full name on the internet. To my chagrin, it looks like my old Xanga account is the first result from a Google search . . . that is very old.
The name has no particular pronunciation. I think of it as being similar to ‘xkcd’ in that Randall once explained that ‘xkcd’ is “a treasured and carefully guarded point in the space of four-character strings.”
You’ll find googling ‘rysade’ to usually return me, and also some very obscure pages in what I think is Russian if you go back far enough. If it is, or ever was, a word in any language, it is certainly not a common one.
Sometimes I’ll add an ‘h’ on the end. Echoing many other posters ITT, I use that version for roleplay characters on occasion. ‘Rysadeh’ has a pronunciation: rye-SAW-deh, with an emphasis on the ‘eh’ at the end as well, giving it an abrupt end.
I’ve used “Alicorn” practically as long as I can remember. The fantasy-geek variant on being a horse crazy little girl is being a unicorn crazy little girl, and I was rather enamored with my vocabulary too. Started using “Alicorn” as one among several screen names and eventually stuck with it over all the others.
I enjoy creating unusual characters and character names—I used to do this more, when I sometimes GM’ed at a .hack// roleplaying forum. Dorikka is just a name that I came up with for a boss creature. I liked the name, so I continued to use it. shrug
The only name use that originates from somewhere else is Miroki, which is a modification of Mitsuko Souma’s name from Battle Royale, a book that I really liked. I don’t think I’ve ever used Miroki as a psuedonym before, though, only a character.
All right. My name is a portmanteau of “Hansen” (my last name) and “Sandinista”. It’s uncommon, connected to my real identity, and (at least to me), amusing.