[OT] Monikers (was Re: [Clipart] PASSFAIL Report)

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

Alan Horkan <horkana at maths.tcd.ie> writes:

>> http://www.bright.net/~jonadab/personal/j/#saga
>
> Interesting, I've never had a nickname that I liked enough to let it
> stick.

I had to pick some kind of moniker and let it stick, because "Nathan"
was too ambiguous.  (I lived two doors down from a Nathaniel, and
there were other guys named Nathan further down the hall...  at least
I'm not a Dave, that would have been far worse.)

I could have just gone by "Eady", but I was feeling inventive.  So I
experimented with assorted pseudonyms, and by the end of my freshman
year, I was the only Jonadab on campus.

Anyway, when I got internet access at home in 1998, I kept it, on the
grounds that college friends would recognize me better that way, and
they would be the most likely people I knew to be on the internet.

It's actually turned out to be a rather good moniker, in terms of
being distinctive enough that nobody gets me confused with anyone
else -- which was the point of using a moniker in the first place.
(I know some people use them to conceal their identities, but
I've never cared about that, and it's easy enough to poke around on
the web and find my real name and address as far as that goes, and
probably where I work and various other details I don't try to keep
secret.)

-- 
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