Three Weeks: name
Apr. 26th, 2011 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootWhy 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 01:26 am (UTC)