names

Posted Jul 1, 2010 11:01 UTC (Thu) by jpnp (guest, #63341)
In reply to: Two GCC stories by NAR
Parent article: Two GCC stories

The whole concept of "real-sounding name" is incredibly subjective.

Your name is what is commonly used to identify yourself. If you use different identifiers in different contexts then you can have multiple versions of your name (e.g. many people called Jon actually have Jonathan on the birth certificate or passport).

I have a number of friends and acquaintances who were first introduced to me in real life by what started out as nick-names or online idents. Some of these people use a nick-name in personal life and their original birth name in their professional life, some use their nick-name with everyone but their passport and bank account, some have gone through the process of legally registering their new name and have no other legal name! In many cases I went years before knowing which category my friends were and what their official name was.

Requiring real-world identifiable contact details before allowing someone to sysAd important project infrastructure seems sensible enough. Ignoring people's contributions to mail-lists because it fails your subjective realness test just seems pathetic.

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names

Posted Jul 3, 2010 2:52 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (4 responses)

I think it's more sane than that. First of all, I dispute that NightStrike isn't a real name. What it is is a name that appears likely not to be the name he uses in parts of his life he cares about. And that makes one believe he's hiding. He wants to be able to do and say things that he can't be made to pay for in those other areas of his life.

Maybe that's an unreasonable suspicion, but I think that's at the base of people's reaction to dealing with people who go by cute screen names.

names

Posted Jul 7, 2010 14:59 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

There are other interpretations, though. I've used the name I use here as an on-net pseudonym for almost twenty years now, but not as an attempt to evade real-life consequences; more as an indication of a shift in personality. Me-in-real-life *does not act* like me-on-the-net, and the name change makes that more obvious than it might otherwise be.

Now perhaps this is uncommon, but it's not unheard of.

names

Posted Jul 12, 2010 21:55 UTC (Mon) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link] (2 responses)

Then, of course, there are people like me. Some 20 years ago now, I legally changed my name to be my online pseudonym. It might not sound real, but it is now my real name...

names

Posted Jul 12, 2010 22:44 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

There are several people who've done the same thing. The man now known as MegaZone is one.

(btw, presumably you kept a surname, for convenience's sake if nothing else? So very many things fall over, from ecommerce to random form-filling and bank applications, if you don't have a surname...)

names

Posted Jul 13, 2010 8:05 UTC (Tue) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]

No, I didn't keep a surname. And yes, only having a single name does cause all manner of things to fall over. I've got used to it by now...