Three Weeks: name

[branchandroot]

Why did you choose your journal name?

That's... kind of a long story, actually. I've been through three now. The first was my legal surname, under which I wrote a lot of porny fanfic. I was young and naive, okay?

(And my legal surname is actually one that I chose myself and shelled out the money and not inconsiderable trouble to have legally changed. You only get one freebe, in the US, and that's if you're getting married. I didn't change my name when I got married, because I'd already done that and it was /my/ name.)

So then I thought I wanted something less instantly google-able. And I settled on the name I'd chosen for my personal website. After a while and some further thought, though, I realized that I had a lot of material on that site that had to do with my 3-d life, and that was still a little closer than I wanted.

So finally I settled on "branch". As in, a branch in the path. Branching out. Besides, most of my personal symbolism involves trees. But that was already taken! So I wound up underscoring it, which was a pain in the butt.

When I moved to IJ, I thought, you know, I want a name I can type all in one go, no underscores. But "branch" still being taken, I needed something related but different. Eventually I settled on "branchandroot", which had a nicely inclusive ring to it and could be said and typed easily. I still use "Branch" as my given name, but I like my journal name quite a lot. In fact, I wound up creating a separate domain of that name for all my fandom stuff, leaving the original domain for the 3-d stuff with no direct overlap at all, which is kind of necessary.

Comments

[krait]

When I moved to IJ, I thought, you know, I want a name I can type all in one go, no underscores.

Haha, and thus you have the reason I am ferdelance on IJ/DW, instead of LJ's fer_de_lance. Though once the underscore-to-hyphen change went through on LJ, I liked that it made the journal name identical to the fannish name. :D

[branchandroot]

*laughs* Seriously, these are so much easier to type.

[tessercat]

My spouse changed hir legal surname to something of hir own choosing. Then when we got married, we both kept our own surnames. I, on the other hand, have recently gone through the hassle of changing my first and middle names. And yes, not inconsiderable trouble is putting it mildly, but worth it.

As one who is drawn to tree imagery/symbolism, I like your DW-name. ^_^ The circularness of sky to earth is cool.

[branchandroot]

*sympathy* It is a huge hassle, isn't it? But definitely worth it. I'm always amused by how many people say my name suits me really well.

*hearts* For all it was a compromise name, I really do like it and especially that aspect of it.

[dancing_serpent]

I like both "branch" and "branchandroot" very much. Am very fond of trees in my own personal symbolism, too. *g*

[branchandroot]

Yeah, in the end, I think I like branchandroot best. It's been a hard-wearing name so far!