Moniker, nom de plume, sobriquet, title, appellation, nom de guerre. Titles all, for the designations with which we choose to be known as.
Names have always been a fascination and recently I have been handed a load more from the blogland. I had a post recently from a Hmmm (3 m's actually!) and it set me thinking about the choices that bloggers have made.
Petrona put me onto ProBlog where I learnt that I fell into the experiential type of blogger (I think experimental would have been more appropriate as I often don't really know what I'm talking about).
I have noticed that by and large the referential bloggers seem to use their real names, well I presume that they are real otherwise Frank Wilson would have come up with something a little more daring! Weird thing is that I know a Wilson Frank, come to that I also know the alliterate Lexi Lobb and also a Sky Texas Delta, but that's my circle, get your own!
Blog names are a subject in themselves and the most weird, strange and often ridiculous names I have found are the ones on Miss Snark, probably because the snarklings are too scared to give anything other than an untraceable name which they change the moment they sign out!
In the blog world I have met -
Petrona - meaning 'small rock' in Greek or she may be from the Roman clan of Petronius (I go for the latter) but she comes under referential so she couldn't help sneaking in her own name of Maxine which incidentally means 'Greatest' latin. Very apt!
Skint - probably not as skint as he likes to think (sympathy vote?) as he scoffs hovis on the quiet (US alert - Hovis is posh bread). Anyway he is a welshman with a penchant for wooly lambs and has a neat line in blogging - if he keeps it up.
Pundy - haven't quite worked this one out yet. Bundy (eng) meaning Free, was the closest I could find but he also provided the good, real name of Liversausage, oh read him, you'll see!
Shameless - probably falls under my category of all-is-not-as-it-seems but he writes some good stuff and keeps lions as pets
Buntifer - an individual who had invented a whole world of Buntiful things but confuses the issue when he signs in as Cheesm from the Tribe of Cheesemongersanonymous, speaking of which...
A-nonny-mouse - pops out of his hole from time to time and is not to confused with the term blog-anony-coms from my own Blogology. Oh dear, this is starting to look like a dictionary or maybe a friends promotion tour (I'll have the chocolate later guys).
Also come across
Mboyfriendisatwat
Tillerman - does what it says on the tin - found lurking on the heaving oceans and in amongst English writer blogs - weirdo but does have a very funny list of 'self'
Vitriolica- my fave web insta-artist, split personality between a writer and an artist, totally reasonable if you ask me.
I know full well why I decided to call myself Minx and before you go making those assumptions bear in mind you will be as far away from the truth as you can get - think Horsehead Nebula and you're not even close.
But why did you choose yours - was it that panic to find something quick when blogger announced that your all time favourite was already taken, or have you held a lifelong ambition to be a 'Squirrelnutkin' in some shape or form?
But here's a thing for you incurably nosey's, I am also known as...
Mrs Minx - at work
Madame Minx - at the bank (yeah, and then I woke up!)
Best Mate Minx - by the Gin Co-operative
Muminx - by the feckers
Darling, yummy, scrummy, pookins, fluffy bum - by the milkman( or should that be milkperson)
Yownx - by Owen (treacherous cat)
'Where's my white shirt?' - by the MD
Mistress Minx - also (on occasion) by the MD, but I'm not going into that one!!
2 comments:
What a wonderful posting, Minx.
Petrona is a rock? Very interesting. I called my blog Petrona becuase, yes I admit it, I had that "freeze" moment when I pressed "next" on blogger and it asked me what I wanted to call the damn thing. I have no imagination to speak of, I just knew I wanted my blog to be for "me", as nowhere else in my life is and I miss my solitude. So I thought of "Petronus" from Harry Potter (first appeared in book 3)-- the imaginary self, or the self as one yearns to be but can't. Petronus was taken as it turned out, and as I am a woman I changed it to the female form of "Petrona", which was available!
I have been meaning to post for ages on blog titles as I have been quite struck by a variety of titles -- some very straightforward, some punning or witty, some just the blogger's name (or nom de p), some are totally obscure and some are like your Hmmm. There is one of the british political blogs called "qwehmt" or somthing like that, with the subtitle "because all the other blog titles were taken". It is quite a dry witty blog (but all the british political blogs are totally obsessed with ID cards and being rude about Tony Blair as if he were Hitler, instead of galvanising themselves to use the power of blogging for something they can actually do something about on a practical level. If you sign up to the British political blogs you will read 15 posts a day all ranting about ID cards or John Prescott. Give us a break, guys, get like the booklit blogs, which are much more varied on the whole.)
Sorry, got distracted there! I love your Minxy personae (petronae?)
Maxine probably does mean greatest but please remember that a first name is one imposed on one by one's parents, not a name one has chosen for onself. I am happier as a Petrona (rock or other self) than as Maxine, a name that has never sat "comfortably" with me as I know the story of how my mother chose it -- or at least, the story she chose to tell me and no doubt many others.
Also this is a reason why my own children have rather boring names, and not "Scarlet" or "Rowena" as I might have wished!
When she was about 5, Cathy said to me "Mummy, why didn't you call me Leia"?
When Jenny was about 5 she decided to call herself "Sparkle" one day. She didn't tell us this, it happened while we were in a kid's educational games shop, one of those where you can try out the computer games. She spent ages on these games and "lost" us -- so the shop assistant asked her her name. "Sparkle" she said. So the annoucement came out over the loudspeaker: "would the mother or father of Sparkle come to the till"....you can fill in the rest!
Have gone on too much, apols.
I can go with Sparkle. When I was carrying the Small Fecker the Big F wanted to call him 'Gordon' or at a push 'Percy' from Thomas the Tank Engine. I won on this count!
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