name |nām|
noun
a word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to
• someone or something regarded as existing merely as a word and lacking substance or reality
A name is a powerful tool. To name a thing is to identify it, and to choose a name is to choose an identity, to define oneself as a unique personality and character. When choosing a name, one should consider the big picture: the name’s appropriateness and longevity; how well or not it represents its object; how it will attract or repel others; how it can refine or pollute the words and thoughts attached to it. When choosing one’s name, one should take care to meditate long and hard on the name’s power and implications; one should think broadly with great consideration and sobriety.
Or, like I, one can just screw oneself from the start.
Having decided to join Stewart Copeland’s forum, I had spent a few days tweaking and changing an introductory post: if this was destined to be my only message, I wanted to make it a good one. After a few rounds of revisions, I was ready. I held my breath, selected all, copied—and stumbled. I had missed a step: I still needed to register for a user account. And in order to get me one of those, I needed a name.
Crap.
Naming characters has never been my strong suit, so naming myself was destined for disaster. I briefly considered using my real name, but I really didn’t want to: I didn’t have much of an “online presence” at the time, and I liked the idea of retaining some anonymity. I didn’t foresee any especially controversial posts to be made on a drummer/composer forum, but I also didn’t need potential employers or my dad tripping across me doing something stupid on the internet.
But there isn’t much that you can do to dress up “kellie” but rhyme it in unfortunate Garbage Pail Kid fashion or attach it to “green.” My half-appellation “kel” goes nowhere in terms of punny wordplay (kelvin, keltic, Kelmer Fudd?), and “walsh” sounds like an onomatopoetic verb related to the unpleasant expulsion of fluids. Mine is just one of those names you must grow to embrace.
I stared at the monitor for a few minutes considering my options. A Stewart Copeland- or Police-related song title or lyric seemed a solid choice, but the few that I considered had already been taken, often in varying spellings. I struggled, poring over thirty years of music in my head, mumbling melodies to get to potentially useful lyrics.
I considered Coco for a while as the opening half of that song is my favorite part of the Rhythmatist album, but two things kept coming to mind: the clown and Micky Dolenz’s sister. (The Sting connection didn’t even occur to me.) It had taken days of summoning the courage to make a simple post, and I had text hanging in limbo in the clipboard waiting to be forgotten or mistakenly saved over, but here I was struggling to resolve the familial relations of a musician that I had a crush on when I was 9. I needed a new approach.
My eyes darted around the room in search of inspiration as I tried on names of objects and stuffed animals, from a dog named Homunculus to a monkey named Ebola. Millions of pages of words on the bookshelves around me, and all I could come up with were Romantic poets, devils, aliens, and mythological women who had met tragic fates. You really can’t call yourself Ophelia or Medea and expect things to end well.
I started sifting through mental lists of random nouns: trees (Willow: too Buffy), spices (Cinnamon: too hooker), Muppets (Animal: taken; Rowlf: meh), uncommon vegetables. I must have sat at my desk for more than an hour tossing around names and identities, only to discover that a eureka idea had either already been taken or was simply too stupid for words. When exasperation suggested that Rutabaga felt like a worthy option, I thought of how I could really use a drink.
Eureka.
Typing letters into the registration form, I found myself falling back on the drink that is my fallback: when I’m out and not in the mood for anything in particular, I order myself a dirty martini. It’s simple, it’s salty, and it’s full of brine and double entendre.
I filled out a password, a confirmation code, minimal contact information. I wondered what “Board Style: euGenio” could mean. I tried to remember how many hours plus or minus GMT I am: most of my work was North America-based, so I rarely had to deal with the math of international time zones.
I hit “submit” and waited for a confirmation email that would never arrive. Instead, a day or two later, on a quiet March Sunday, I tried my luck at logging on. Even only a couple of days later, this new name of mine already felt stupid, but it was better than Rutabaga, and I didn’t want to start the process over again. I hadn’t thought in terms of longevity or appropriateness; I had never considered how my “name” might be shortened or the confusion that might occur by having an abbreviation the same as a prominent poster already on the board. I had no way of knowing that eventually my real name would be bandied about often enough that I may as well have just cut to the chase from the start.
Most of all, I never once considered the possibility that I or anyone else would ever have to say this name out loud. These people weren’t real; they were just people on the internet, electronic buddies to chat with about Stewart Copeland’s music and the exciting new Police tour approaching. I would never see them; I would never meet them; I would never have to look a person in the eye and say, “Hi, I’m DirtyMartini.” It was just a silly name on a fan forum.
Once logged in, I took a few hours of fiddling around with a couple of unremarkable warm-up posts, but I finally posted my inevitably embarrassing introduction, sounding a lot like the lame, psychotic twit that I had hoped to avoid. I even managed to quip on my new name, throwing in a comment about liking my drummers like I like my martinis—a groan-worthy line that is justifiable only if all parties involved are inebriated.
Mine wasn’t a post for the ages; my registration wasn’t an event for the history books. But for me it was the opening step of a journey that would consume part of my life for years to come and serve as the subject of this current writing project of mine. And in the process, within this small electronic world, it would give me a new identity.
But first the Police tour needed to begin.
*****
To be continued.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Madam, your name is distinctive, capable of abbreviation, and – for the misguided minority – drinkable.
Without wishing to complicate your thesis, I’d suggest that if you’d called yourself Rudabaga, history would have unfolded in much the same way.
(except that non-americans would have mis-pronounced your name a lot)
A username can definitely be a powerful thing, and coming up with one that works well for you can be a big challenge.
After fifteen years or so of using it, I’m still damned happy with sockii. It was a play off of something obscure from my “first fandom” and something I’ve always been comfortable with (when people shout it out at a convention or other gathering, I’m more prone to respond to it than hearing my own “real” name.) While I may go by other names in other contexts, it’s still the identity I primarily associate with my “fannishness”, and I’m cool with that.
@kate — Rutabaga just doesn’t have the gravitas, despite the equivalent silliness.
@sockii — I love your username. Its distinctive yet unshowy and comfortable to say. The story behind it is fun, but it works well even without any background. Great choice.
Hi, this interested me as i’m thinking about what my username could be. Thanks for the insights
Hi, Joanne. Thanks for the comment.
What you need a username for matters, of course, but if you have any intention of saying anything ever — even just once — with the account, do choose wisely. Few probably consider that an online social situation could result in actually meeting people in person, but having a really dopey username seems to almost guarantee the greatest embarrassment possible. Like being introduced to someone’s wife as “DirtyMartini.”
Joining the forum at sc.net was like attending the first day at a new school for me. I didn’t know anybody nor was I hip to any of the jargon and protocols since this was my first experience interacting with an online forum (prior to this, the only forum I was familiar with was within the pages of Penthouse magazines from the early 1980’s). I thought I was too old to start doing this kind of thing.
I regretted my first choice of username as it was more apropos of an internet predator than that of a huge Stewart Copeland/Police fan that I have been for decades – and always will be. I opted for a different username that hopefully doesn’t repulse any of our resident nutters at sc.net.
Two years on now my spelling is still atrocious, my punctuation likely even worse. I can’t write nearly as eloquently like a lot of the gifted folks on our forum can. To make matters worse, I type like a fourth grader but at the end of the day I wouldn’t want to spend my time anywhere else but on sc.net. That’s okay as my wife tells me I am way too cranky for something the masses call “social networking” these days.
Thanks for dropping in, Rusty! Good to see you.
I never thought anything negative about your old username, but I was also taking Classics classes at the time, so it might have just felt oddly familiar. I certainly wouldn’t object to just switching over to Kellie, but I’ve also grown weirdly used to my moniker, warts and all. I made my martini; now I must lie in it.
I must disagree with the wife, though: I’d say you’re perfectly cranky for what the masses call social networking these days. :)
Stewart yelling “Kellie!!” from the stage in Savannah wouldn’t have had nearly the same pizzazz and his yelling, “Dirty Martini!!” You’ve made me curious to look up your first post now. ;-)
Stewart yelling “Kellie!!” from the stage in Savannah wouldn’t have had nearly the same pizzazz and his yelling, “Dirty Martini!!”
Haha. Truth. The play’s the thing.