wherein Liz thinks about names
Oct. 23rd, 2012 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI have two fannish names: Elizabeth Culmer and edenfalling.
Elizabeth Culmer is actually part of my legal name -- my two middle names -- and was what I automatically reached for as a pseudonym when I started writing fanfiction on FictionAlley in April 2002, since I'd been using it as a pen name for original fiction as far back as... I guess eleven or twelve years old? Anyway, when I was a kid I decided that I needed to become a famous writer in order to continue the Culmer family name and have children in order to continue the [redacted] family name, since Vicky and I were the last of two family lines at that point. (We have since acquired a Culmer cousin, so I figure that name is now his responsibility. I have also realized that I am asexual, so I figure the [redacted] family name is on Vicky's shoulders, not mine... unless I do become a famous writer under my first and last legal names, not my middle names. *grin*)
Edenfalling is something I grabbed more or less at random when I got a livejournal in November 2003. It is taken from Eden, a short, pretentious Harry Potter 15-minute fic I wrote and posted anonymously on a prompt journal, which was lucky enough to snag![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
isiscolo's attention as part of her project to hand out invitation codes to members of fandom. (This was back when LJ still required invite codes.) It has nothing to do with any statement of religious affiliation -- if anything, it was a statement of my own depression at the time I created my journal -- though I realize in retrospect it can easily come off that way. :-/
So if you ask my name, I am much more likely to tell you Elizabeth Culmer than to tell you edenfalling, because the former is my name, whereas the latter is just a journal name. Except! People tend to get identified by their journal names online, so over the years edenfalling has effectively become a second name, and I have gradually become acclimated to that shift in identification. I even finally merged the two on AO3, where my user name is edenfalling but the only pseudonym I ever use is Elizabeth Culmer, so I always appear as "Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)". (That was not by choice, incidentally -- it was a side effect of AO3 not allowing spaces in user names -- but these days I like the way it officially links my two fannish names.)
The thing is, because I started out thinking of myself as Elizabeth Culmer and not as edenfalling, the nickname I use online is Liz. Not Eden. It's not technically wrong to think that Eden might be a reasonable nickname, and I can certainly understand that people using that nickname are talking to me, but it's not a name I have ever voluntarily used. And it does annoy me (to a greater or lesser degree depending on the person and the context) when other people call me Eden -- you see, it projects a casual familiarity rather than the moderate formality of Elizabeth Culmer and edenfalling, while simultaneously demonstrating that the person using that nickname is not actually familiar with me at all, because if they were they'd call me Liz.
...
In summary, names are weird. Then again, they are one of the signifiers most closely bound up with who we are, so it's not surprising that people can get touchy about nuances in how they are addressed.
Elizabeth Culmer is actually part of my legal name -- my two middle names -- and was what I automatically reached for as a pseudonym when I started writing fanfiction on FictionAlley in April 2002, since I'd been using it as a pen name for original fiction as far back as... I guess eleven or twelve years old? Anyway, when I was a kid I decided that I needed to become a famous writer in order to continue the Culmer family name and have children in order to continue the [redacted] family name, since Vicky and I were the last of two family lines at that point. (We have since acquired a Culmer cousin, so I figure that name is now his responsibility. I have also realized that I am asexual, so I figure the [redacted] family name is on Vicky's shoulders, not mine... unless I do become a famous writer under my first and last legal names, not my middle names. *grin*)
Edenfalling is something I grabbed more or less at random when I got a livejournal in November 2003. It is taken from Eden, a short, pretentious Harry Potter 15-minute fic I wrote and posted anonymously on a prompt journal, which was lucky enough to snag
isiscolo's attention as part of her project to hand out invitation codes to members of fandom. (This was back when LJ still required invite codes.) It has nothing to do with any statement of religious affiliation -- if anything, it was a statement of my own depression at the time I created my journal -- though I realize in retrospect it can easily come off that way. :-/So if you ask my name, I am much more likely to tell you Elizabeth Culmer than to tell you edenfalling, because the former is my name, whereas the latter is just a journal name. Except! People tend to get identified by their journal names online, so over the years edenfalling has effectively become a second name, and I have gradually become acclimated to that shift in identification. I even finally merged the two on AO3, where my user name is edenfalling but the only pseudonym I ever use is Elizabeth Culmer, so I always appear as "Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)". (That was not by choice, incidentally -- it was a side effect of AO3 not allowing spaces in user names -- but these days I like the way it officially links my two fannish names.)
The thing is, because I started out thinking of myself as Elizabeth Culmer and not as edenfalling, the nickname I use online is Liz. Not Eden. It's not technically wrong to think that Eden might be a reasonable nickname, and I can certainly understand that people using that nickname are talking to me, but it's not a name I have ever voluntarily used. And it does annoy me (to a greater or lesser degree depending on the person and the context) when other people call me Eden -- you see, it projects a casual familiarity rather than the moderate formality of Elizabeth Culmer and edenfalling, while simultaneously demonstrating that the person using that nickname is not actually familiar with me at all, because if they were they'd call me Liz.
...
In summary, names are weird. Then again, they are one of the signifiers most closely bound up with who we are, so it's not surprising that people can get touchy about nuances in how they are addressed.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-23 11:09 pm (UTC)...Of course, I say that as someone whose assorted online monikers are pretty much entirely spur-of-the-moment affairs I came up with due to lack of imagination and/or any preferred names being unavailable on a given service. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-24 02:48 am (UTC)