You Can Call Me Anders
What's in a name? According to Shakespeare not much, but I had a hard time picking my avatar's name when I first signed up for a Second Life account. Googling for "choosing a second life name" turns up various suggestions about picking a name for yourself in SL, but I couldn't find much writing about why someone chose their own particular name. So I thought I would write about what led me to choose the name Anders Falworth.
The first thing someone has to do when signing up for a Second Life account is choose a name. This name is unlike the usernames you have to choose for any other web site account in that it must be a first and last name. I almost always use some form of deryck when I sign up for a service depending on what's available -- I'm known variously as deryck, deryckh, and deryckhodge across Google, Flickr, Facebook, et al. Since I had to choose a last name other than my own, and given that deryck insert-other-last-name-here didn't seem to have the ring of my own name, I decided to just embrace a new world, a new me, and create a completely unrelated name from my own.
I literally spent 30 minutes at the account creation screen trying to think of a new name. At the time that I signed up, I wanted Second Life to be a diversion from work over the holidays. Something fun and immersive, like going on vacation digitally, but also a way to learn new things while playing. So the thoughts going through my mind were of all the things I had immersed myself in over the last 10 years -- music, comics, and sci-fi TV and film. And for some reason -- maybe given what the virtual world reminded me of -- I couldn't get the agent from the Matrix out of my head. All I could hear was "Mr. Anderson" with that snide, chiding tone. Then I mind jumped over to Battlestar Galactica and thought of the character Anders from that show. And Anders became the first name.
The last name was not a big choice for me. I scrolled the list trying various names until I liked the combination. Falworth seemed mysterious, adventurous, even a little dark maybe.
An email later to activate the account and here we are. It's funny... I've been called "Anders" so much in world, I'm starting to think of myself by that name somewhat. I guess it's a bit like IRC nicks. I've seen people on Samba Team answer in real life to either their given names or their nicks. If someone came up to me in real life and said, "Hey, Anders," I'd probably say hey back and start talking before it dawned on me that wasn't my real name. So it's okay... call me Deryck or Anders. I'll likely answer to either.
Posted by deryck on January 24, 2008
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