Date: 2009-09-09 20:38 Security: Public Mood: happy Tags: my name, usernames Subject: A new alternative username

So, I think I've finally settled on a way of picking usernames on sites that need me to sign up for them.

In a sense, I was lucky with the male name I used, because it was a highly unusual spelling. This was both a blessing and a curse; the blessing was that I would almost always get the username I wanted, while it was a curse because nobody ever managed to pronounce it properly if they saw it spelt out, or spell it properly if they heard it pronounced. But now that I use the name Sophie, I can't rely on that any more; tons of people have the name Sophie. :D

But up until now, I only had two usernames that I used - Sophie being my preferred one (and also the one most likely to already be taken), and Sophira being the one I'd take if the first was in use (which it frequently was). The name "Sophira" came about from a combination of my first and middle names - Sophie and Kira. It also had a nice ring to it, as well as being similar to the name Saphira, the female dragon in the book Eragon - although that didn't actually cross my mind until after I was already using it, and I don't really identify much as a dragon now in any case.

Usually that was enough - it was rare that "Sophira" would be taken too, which is mostly the reason that I chose it. (And of course I managed to get the name "sophie" on Dreamwidth right from the start; being heavily involved in the process of starting up has its advantages. *grins*) Occasionally, though, even the name Sophira would be taken, which left me with no alternatives. I'd then try "Soph" just in case, but generally the name is either too short for a username, or has been used already (very likely, if the first two had been taken too). This has been the case on eBay and YouTube so far.

So I started thinking about the username I'd thought of before, idade - Brazilian Portugese for "era". However, it wasn't personal enough and I really didn't feel too attached to it. I thought of it at the time because I was looking for a gender-neutral name for my LJ, before I finally gave in and just renamed it to "soph". (And it was very much the right decision, btw - nobody's said to me anything bad about it, and I feel a lot better about the change.) But even had I felt better about it on LJ, I wouldn't want future nicknames to be gender-neutral - I wanted them to reflect me.

But thinking about it, the right alternative nickname just came to me - TheSophera.

For those who don't see it, the play is on the words "The Soph era". It's personal, and alludes to my transgender status without actually coming close to being explicit about it. In addition, it's a play on the name "Sophira", which is important because it uses a name that I use for myself - it's me.

And it was free on both eBay and YouTube, so that's the username I'm using on these sites now. It won't ever be my main username, but I'm happy that I've found a name that I can identify with and like without actually making anybody even think it's talking about my being transgendered.