What's with the Name?

Desmond Shang

A multiracial name, as is my immediate family.

Desmond... des monde, or, 'the world' ... specifically in reference to this:



If you know me well enough, you'll get it...

grin

I looked at the available last names.
Trubuchet - that sounds interesting
... and a Trebuchet is an ancient sling weapon
... and when I'm in SL, I'm SL-ing

... and a little relation couldn't quite say my first name correctly
So it all came together by accident.

I get that a lot from people who don't know my style, really (which isn't particularly pain intensive) ... so no need to apologize.

But I can assure you that it wasn't intentionally chosen for that reason.

When I first joined Second Life, I had a different name - a name that I had not thought deeply about and had no real attachment to. In my first week, Second Life was merely a game, and I was only here to check it out to see if I wanted to play. After a few days, I realized that SL was not a game and that I needed to select a name that was more personal to me. I spent over a week thinking about a name before I ultimately created a new account and chose Persephone.

In Greek mythology Persephone has a second life. For half the year she is the Goddess of Springtime and Summer. And for the remainder of the year, she is the Queen of the Underworld and wife of Hades. I love the story of Persephone and all of the visual imagery that goes along with. I love the combination of light and dark - the multifaceted nature of her identity and place in the world. And on purely aesthetic terms, I think Persephone is a beautiful name.

It did for me.

Tex = I'm from Texas, Duh!!

Nasworthy = No idea why I picked that name.
Maybe it was a subconscience choice, NASworThY. LOL

If I had any idea that I would still be in SL a year later I would have put more effort into picking a more meaningful name.

Some of the new last names are cool. I HAD to nab an alt with the last name Sinister. It was up about 2 weeks ago, but I dunno if it still is or not.

I think mine’s fairly obvious.
I was surprised at the number of Walt’s there were.

Trout refers to my debilitating obsession with finding Trout. It's a RL nickname as well that I don't get called much anymore by anyone except very old friends. Errr...friends who are still very young like me but who defy the laws of physics and time by having known me longer than either of us could possibly have been alive. nm. Anyway, I hunt trout with a flyrod and a bit of fluff tied to a hook.

"Recreant" is a name I am still extremely bitter about. I really do have bad feelings about it. I didn't think to Google it when I took it on, and I sort of thought about it as being related to re-creating oneself and recreation in the sense of enjoying one's spare time. Morwen tells me that this is what it means in Dutch, which is why I have that in my sig, despite being American and of Irish descent. It's true meaning is repulsive to me, and I'm well and truly pissed at myself for not knowing that and at LL for even putting it in there as a choice. I feel like I was tricked and I couldn't hate it any more than I do. Everyone knows me by this name now, my CC is linked to this account, a lot of my stuff is non-transferrable, etc, so I'm stuck.

/me stomps off in a sulk.

Nicholas Lyndhurst is one of the best known comedy actors in the UK. I saw the surname and was surpised to find that Nicholas was available and took it.

As he is very well known here but not so much in other parts of the world, It makes it easy for me to recognise fellow Brits as they can't resist saying "Hello Rodney". (His best known character).

Sometimes I wonder if I perhaps shouldn't have "stolen" his name, but if I hadn't, sombody else would, and I'm quite a fan so maybe it is ok.

I'm often asked if I'm the REAL Nicholas Lyndhurst, to which I usually reply "Well I am here in SL".

Oh . . I'm sad now. I liked your sig. Made me laugh.
/me wanders away confused and sad

The lead female character in "Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood.

Noam like Mr. Chomsky. Sprocket, because @ the time I liked steampunk.

I was stealing from literature - Kurt Vonegut, precisely. I wanted to be "Malachi Constant" - the protagonist of Sirens of Titan, but of course my surname wasn't available.

I then thought of the artificial families created by the last president of the united states in "Slapstick" where the government issued last names consisting of a natural object and a number (e.g. Daffodil-11, Chipmunk-16, etc.). Petunia was the only one that fit the bill.

Combine "Petunia" with my forum avatar of a clover flower picked for me by my daughter, and my "default" pinkish outfit in-game and I think it has caused people to make presumptions about my sexual preference (which I find sorta amusing).

You're sad that I'm not actually Dutch? Maybe Morwen could give me Dutch lessons. She's the only Dutch person I know. I like my sig as well. It's goofy.

Don't be sad. It's not like it's your fault. I love SL, and I have a blast here in the forums. Every time I see my last name it pains me, but I have no option but to live with that.

{snip} ok, I put the name into the dictionary thingie and now see what it means in English. I am now glad that I purposely chose the last name first when I saw it was available. Sorry. Other than being listed as a synonym, I have no idea what pusillanimous means.

For years, people in real life have mistakenly called me Natalie. So it came time to choose a name in SL, I thought, "well, I must look like a Natalie, so now I'll be one." I chose Paderborn because I liked the sound of it (and there were not a lot of great options back in November of last year...), but if I'd known it was the name of a German city and that choice was going to get me asked by countless Germans if I was German as well, I might have chosen something different!

I absolutely loved that book.

My name was, in many ways, a snap decision, but one dat worked out perfect for me. It makes a good kid name, I tink (in spite of the last name now having a sound like the big missing child story).

I picked last name first. I wanted something with a British Isles sound to it. I also liked dat it was one of the more "normal" (as in: sounds like somethign you'd expect in the consentual world) sounding names, and I wanted to avoid a fake-sounding "internet" name. I might feel different today, because I've grown acclimated to tinking of a lot of odd tings as last names, an would not bat an eye at a "Paperdoll" or "Protagonist" in the consentual world.

Marianne came next. I liked the alliteration of the first and last name pair. It flowed well, and sounded good on the tongue. Sometime after choosing it, I realized the more subconscious part of the name choice - it being also a Tori Amos song.



/me slips Michael a fiver

Mari

I picked Nimue because I like the sound of it and the way it feels when you say it. Also, and I like all of the Lady of the Lake, Merlin's lover/wife/downfall stuff that goes with it. I guess too it appeals to me becasue it shares the first letter of my real name and, vaguely I suppose, the same feel.

Chip is my real first name, and Midnight was both closest to my real last name and my favorite word in the list at the time I chose.

*giggles*

When I joined back on Dec 06, I tried using y real name with most of the last names available, all the Kate were in use So I went with a gaelic variation that an ex g/f had come up with for our City of Heroes toons. It's still pronounced Kate or Cat if you go with an alternative sound.

Chevalier was picked as it flowed very nicely together plus it means member of knighthood which considering my love of fantasy themes (EQ, EQ@, WoW, work at Texas Ren Fest, etc) ended up being rather fitting.

Shocking how many ask if I am French. Must be the combo of last name and my "allo" I use to greet people with.

Nothing really interesting about mine. Brad is my real name, but friends always end up calling me Bradley so that's why I chose it for the game. I chose Bracken just because I thought Bradley Bracken had a nice ring to it.

Ah, fond memory of our first meeting because I guessed that.

Can't discuss here how I came to get my SL name. I'd have to shoot you all straight after.

pusillanimous: Timid, cowardly, spineless.

Ugh. I want to beat myself up now. We should get one free name change for each account. People pick stuff as newbs without really knowing what they are doing.

Goddamn it. Who at LL thought that Recreant would make a good last name to add to the list!? Every time I see it I get a sick feeling in my stomach.