The Friday Fillip: Names, –Nyms, and Noms

Everybody wants to be somebody else. At least it sometimes seems that way to me. I must lack the drive to alterity that motivates a lot of folk: so, for instance, on Twitter I am @fodden — than which few handles could be more staid and stolid — while the Twitterverse is decorated with millions of colourful keladinyms, such as @DeweyDecibel, @sarahcuda, @brundle_fly, @TheTweetOfGod, @sassygal22 (arriving a little late, it seems), and @etcetera.

Now, were I to pick a nickname, I wouldn’t go for brevity but rather for sonority — what someone (Twain? Dickens?) describing a law firm name once called the sound of a barrel bouncing down a flight of steps. My choice would be Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Doesn’t that just puff up your pecs? Yet the real TB von H fled this chunky moniker in favour of what is only a half-decent pseudonym, Paracelsus, under which banner he invented the unconscious, perhaps explaining something — oh, and contributed to the development of medicine.

The thing, though, about a nom de quelque chose is the quelque chose part: you pretty much have to do something with it. —plumes write, —guerres fight, for example, both of which entail a considerable commitment. You just don’t find people hiding behind noms de sieste in order to have naps or noms de flânerie to facilitate hanging about.

As ever, Wikipedia shows you the basic nature of the problem: nearly 350 noteworthy pseudonyms of people who were determined to make a mark and sign someone else’s name to the cheque. Artists . . . Banksy, Man Ray, Picasso (geb., as the Germans say, Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso), Tintoretto and Tom of Finland. Politicians . . . Ché, Caligula, Tito, Pol Pot (terrible trend here). Religious people . . . Ram Das, Mother Teresa (geb. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Cat Stevens. On and on and on.

Dickens was once Boz, and George Elliot was once Mary Ann Evans. Deep Throat turned out to be Mark Felt, Samuel Langhorne Clemens turned into Mark (no middle name) Twain, and in a turn up for the books John Kenneth Galbraith was Mark Epernay for as long as it took him to write and publish a satire — which in his case would likely have been no time at all.

So where are you in all of this? Do you have another name of your own choosing or are you anonymous when you’re not quite yourself? You could be Pandora Crider. Too . . . outré? Fine: how about Irene Hill? These and millions more are yours to choose from as products of the Random Name Generator, which lets you ratchet the thing from common to rare. It’s intended to assist fiction writers, but nothing says you couldn’t nick a nym for yourself. Or you could try the Pseudonym Generator, which doesn’t mess with ordinary. Ronnica Burlew. Torey Shi, Agna Clockedile (honestly). Live a little, because identity (i.e. a ten point match with some of your official records) is not all it once was cracked up to be.

Basilius Peterkin