Why did you choose your particular user name?

[JoelWildtree]

Latest post of the previous page:

I have this same username at several other places, so I figured for the sake of simplicity I'd keep it here too. Joel is my name, and Wildtree is an anagram of my last name

[petra10]

Welcome Joel of course I am trying to work out your last name.
Is it Wiltreed

[Alan C.]

I have this same username at several other places, so I figured for the sake of simplicity I'd keep it here too. Joel is my name, and Wildtree is an anagram of my last name

And here was me thinking..........maybe you were a native American.

[squiffy]

[JoelWildtree]

And here was me thinking..........maybe you were a native American.

Haha! Well, what makes you think I'm not? ;)

[Lord Caelvan]

I rolled up a name straight out of a guide to elven culture I happen to own. A bit of tinkering led me to become Aramil Caelvan. I tossed in the title Lord (Heru in elven) because it sounded nice, and there we have it.

[tehabwa]

Read only the first few pages of this thread.

'Moose' is a nickname for a big guy, that's why people assume someone with that nickname is a guy.

Nick, I'm of course keen to know what the name your parents gave you, that you dislike so much, is.

I've never been wild about 'Jill' but am just so used to it that I know I'd never answer to anything else.

Here's a link to my blog entry explaining my name:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-su_oxnAw ... ?cq=1&p=31

Hope that's OK. (I pasted the whole thing in another thread -- I think the "Use this to learn how to post" thread in the Reception section.)

Although part of my reason for using it is that whatever I post is evaluated by just the words I write, so sexless is a plus, I'm surprised as how many people assume I'm a guy. tehabwa sounds female to me.

But then I end up plastering the fact I'm female all over the place anyway -- not to mention giving out my actual name.

Also, it has no connection to my actual name, so all the godless and anti-Bush, commie stuff I post isn't traceable to me. Like for potential employers or something.

[Nick]

Nick, I'm of course keen to know what the name your parents gave you, that you dislike so much, is.

Well next time you see them, just ask!

[Aphra]

I admire Aphra Behn. http://www.chawton.org/library/biographies/behn.html

[Heurismus]

Long long story, but when I first logged onto the net I was casting around for a unique, and I suppose intriguing, name.

It is a combination of 2 names.

As 2001 was the first film that really blew me away at 14, age restrictions were no big deal in British Forces cinemas, I fell in love with Arthur C. Clarke's work and became intrigued by the concept of the HAL (Heuristic, algorithmic, logarithmic) onboard computer.
In addition to the above I was, much later, reading Russell's HoWP and came across the churchman Erasmus, considered to be one of the early great humanists of the church. (I liked this man immediately I hasten to add even as a clearly stated atheist, it is the human that awes, not the superhuman)

So, putting two and two together in some syzegistic guise (The fact I'm supposedly a rationalist/atheist cum humanist/cultural Christian) the proof of my mudpie was in the eating. Several impressed comments later and that sensation of growing into my virtual name, it stuck and I have no intention of ever changing it.

I dare say however a certain German university's students, when typing in Heurismus, will get a shock, or perhaps already have, because instead of coursework mentioning their pet computing project, they'll get mad old me!!!

[Oolon Colluphid]

Mine should be fairly obvious.

(If not, click here.)

[solidair]

i'm solidair because it's the name of my favorite record.

[Moonbeam]

Welcome, solidair.

I don't think I know that particular record. Who's it by?

I hope you'll introduce yourself properly in Reception sometime.

[solidair]

it's a record by john martyn

[Lifelinking]

John Martyn is fab

[xman]

My name is Xavier, but it is a difficult name for many English speakers, so I shortened it to X a long time ago. Most forums won't allow a one letter name so xman it is! It's been a pet name since before there was an internet so it's easy to remember. My wife is the Validator.

Havin' a laugh at ourselves:


X

[Maria Mac]

That's brilliant, X!

[Heurismus]

That's brilliant, X!

I love it too, welcome to you both. 'Life has to be fun else we couldn't love it in the long run'.

[ontologist]

It just popped into my head when I signed up. Seemed appropriate for this place.
I'm active on a few other forums under different user names.

[Ephemerid]

"Ephemirid" is a word I first came across in the first line of a poem by Robinson Jeffers I really like. An "ephemerid" is the technical name for an insect of the mayfly order, whose lifespan is extremely short, a few days at most (coming from the same Latin root as "ephemeral"):

THE TREASURE

Mountains, a moment's earth-waves rising and hollowing; the earth too's an ephemerid; the stars--
Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in their summer, they spiral
Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives long, the whole sky's
Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf before birth, and the gulf
After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch of eternity is nothing too tiresome,
Enormous repose after, enormous repose before, the flash of activity.
Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue and epilogue merely
To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called life? I fancy
That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it; interjection, a jump of breath at that silence;
Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: a man finding treasure says "Ah!" but the treasure's the essence;
Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken he gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.

~ Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

What I love about this poem is Jeffers tries to express the vastness of the universe and the tiny part we play in it. But we partake of that miracle-- we are a part of that miracle in fact.

[Ninny]

It's what Jaywhat calls me, so I suppose I must be one.