"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Almost all of us have heard these famous lines from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, words alluding to the idea that the essence of something cannot be captured in its name alone.
Does a name matter? Does your user name matter? Some of us spent a lot of time deciding on a user name before becoming a member. Others, like me, didn't put a lot of thought into it. I entered the name I went by on a couple of other online forums, where the custom was to use your first name and then a location identifier. Also, when Jim joined, he joined as jim in IA, so I signed up as "Melanie in IA".
Well, the name is not the thing, but I AM Melanie and I DO live in Iowa. So it fits.
I never thought about it a lot before, but this evening I happened to wonder if there were any other users named "Melanie." I used the search function and checked. Join me below the squiggle for the results I found.
By my count, there are 26 users with a name that contains "Melanie" or "melanie". Of those, two of us have positive mojo, and five have been banned. (I better be careful...) Six of us have authored at least one diary, but other than my own diaries, the most recent one was two full years ago. Two of the six have no diaries showing, implying they've been deleted.
So what happened to all the other Melanies out there? Where did they go? Why don't they ever comment or write? Are they lurking or completely inactive?
And what's in a name? Using my name, it's only me as an active user at Daily Kos.
How did you choose YOUR user name? Are there others here with similar names? Do you ever get confused with another, as Troubadour and The Troubadour do? Or Indepenant Man and Independantman? Or Kestrel and kestrel9000 and the handful of other kestrels out there?