What's in a name?

[stephbg]

I sometimes wonder if I should change the name of my blog to something a little more dignified, witty or clever. And then I wonder if I'm being unacceptibly pretentious. At that point I realise that no-one but myself is paying attention. But then I look at the counter and think, well, *someone's* paying attention. Then I remind myself to come back to reality.

But in the end I have to ask: Does anyone give a damn what the thing is called? And do you care about yours?

ETA: I refer not to my username, but the blog name "Propping up a dodgy memory: it's for me to keep track of myself"

Comments

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I sometimes worry that mine will make people think I'm in some way an angry person.

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

mine matters to me, it's a part of my identity that i had long before lj. Not to mention I don't like to use any association of my real name online as a username if i can avoid it.

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

i also like to see what other people choose/change theirs too etc, and sometimes i get a clear indication that it's an expression of personality and other times the deliberate distancing therein.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Or laziness. I honestly didn't think about mine that hard.

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

yes - that too :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Well, I frequently refer to you verbally as stephbg to distinguish you from Stefan or skwerlie-Steph or jeremy's-friend-Steph. But I would be intrigued as to what you would change it to - and after black_samvara and stickykitty's changes, I'm just about recovered from the mind-shock of reading past entries and seeing people's new tag show up where they originally put the old one.

As to my own, I've mixed feelings about it. I originally coined it for MUDding back when I read a lot of fat fantasy, so it's not particularly representative of who I am now. But it does uniquely identify me - the first page of google now tracks down most of the social networking sites I've tinkered with. I still release c64 stuff as "Christopher Jam," despite that handle's verbosity.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Maybe a little... I've always thought of it as vaguely ironic.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I refer to 'The Professional Lap Cat' not your username. It's a great title :-)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I refer to your blog title 'Christopher's Ramblings' rather than your username. I'm not inclined to come up with an alternative username for myself. I've never been a great one for nicknames, and the various terms of endearment used by family and Husband wouldn't make particularly suitable public usernames.

One of my sisters calls me Kidlet. My father used to call me Stephalococcus. Husband calls me Bunny. In primary school they called me Stick, or Brain. Later they called me Cube (because I was so square).

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

It is indeed :) I still adore it :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Ah - oops. Re-reading your post, you were actually quite clear about that. Let's try this again.

No, I like the current title. It's already witty and dare I say it "hip," in a very Web 2.0 kind of way. You've done well.

(though I must admit, I think Stephalococcus is a great nickname!)

[fe2h2o.livejournal.com]

When I changed from blogger to wordpress I changed the blog name. Fefifofum was something I picked to use, but without much thought. When I set up the wordpress blog, I'd been blogging for some years and had more idea what I was likely to talk about (and who the audience was likely to be:-) ). I chose Genial Hearth because it seemed to give more of a feel as to what a reader might find. It's also more easily memorable, and easier to type—making it more searchable:-)

In truth however, I rarely pay much attention to what _other_ people call their blogs... unless I want to link to them (there are some _doozies_ that have hosted the various homeschool carnivals!) And then, it's usually only in terms of trying to phrase the request. If they have a username that is distinct from a blog name, that can be helpful:-)

[cricketk.livejournal.com]

Err - I picked 'stutterings' an age ago. It's perhaps even more appropriate now than it was then. But I didn't think overly hard about it. And don't think about it at all anymore.

But I'm also prone to not changing my username or my LJ layout or my icon. I pretty much go 'sufficient' and move on to whatever I want to do next.

[possbert.livejournal.com]

i like it!

My old blog on Blogspot was called Posscards from the Edge.

[possbert.livejournal.com]

i like it! Yours, I mean.

My old blog on Blogspot was called Posscards from the Edge.

[http://users.livejournal.com/doctor_k_/]

"Hallo, everybody!"

"Hallo, Dr Nick!"

Oops, no, that's what I call my friends pages.

My LJ? All My Little Words is a Magnetic Fields song of which I am fond. It just seemed appropriate for my often trivial entries.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Trivial is the stuff of real life from which we all spring. Makes the best reading in frogs.

[babalon-93.livejournal.com]

I have always liked 'propping up a dodgy memory' though I would be inclined to lose the 'it's for me to keep track of myself'--though to be honest I didn't even know it was there til you pointed it out.

I do think though that the blog title is not something that people care that much about with lj blogs because you find them and refer to them by username--as evidenced by the first several people thinking you are referring t 'stephbg'--if you were to be writing on a different blog platform I think that it would be more of an issue, though I would still like 'propping up a dodgy memory'.

[fred-mouse.livejournal.com]

personally, I don't give a damn.

(about yours, or mine. In fact, I'd have to go back and look at my page to find out what mine says. It makes no difference to me if you leave it that way forever, or if you change it as often as your underwear)

[(Anonymous)]

I love the title! And in fact, have pinched it on occasion when referring to why I write posts for my 'professional' blog. I really write for me to remember stuff, 'cos there are days when my memory is crap, and then there are the times when I learn something and know I'll need it again later, but it could be 2 to 3 years before I do, and I just *know* I'll forget how to do it again. So I write it down and share it. If someone finds it useful, that good; if not, it doesn't matter - it's my brain dump for 'propping up my dodgy memory'.

Rhonda (professional blog: http://cybertext.wordpress.com but you already knew that!)