use a real sounding name - no edge cases please

I have a friend named Kermit.  He said to me "I liked my name until that damned frog came along".

I usually had 2-4 kids in my class with my name, and in one class 3 of us were in a row and the teacher called us Larry, Darryl and Darryl, after a TV show and it stuck, so I named my daughter Skye so she wouldn't have that problem.  She could never find anything with her name on it, as a kid, so that sucked for her, but she's quite happy to be different now.  People remember her name and, as she went to all-French school, she was often called Ciel, French for sky.

Real Sounding names don't have numbers in them. So when someone signs up as Devon78490, it's easy for staff to know that it's probably a spammer.

Real Sounding names usually have vowels in them, and have standard capitalization. So GxytMX is typical of a spammer name.

Real Sounding names don't sound like marketing gimicks: Free Money, Best Chainsaws, Super Vitamins.

It's somewhat common for someone to have a real name that is questioned by a staff member. That's a good opportunity for staff training.

It's also common for real people to share names with famous people. It's easy enough to send in a photocopy of an identification card. The other famous "Joseph Lofthouse" is a musician in the UK. We are probably about 4th cousins.

Oh man, my good friend Best Chainsaws is gonna be so pissed when she tries to sign up...

I like this site because you feel like real people.  It is hard to make friends with SexBot436777432 because SexBot436767432 is evil and they look like the same person.  (I know the second one is evil because he said so and acts evail)

Real names look more human.  less like number-letter-people.  

Someone mentioned this to me today:

I never noticed how incredibly horrible a lot of people are until I started reading comments on news sites, and their behvor is even worse when they don’t need to use real names.

Hm something I never knew about here which makes sense. One thing I like about this site is how few attacks there seem to be, so Moderators thank you!

Re the naming thing? I know someone who said I should use a different name, because Jenny is a female ass. And I said, well, that fits, but it’s also a weaving tool. Seems appropriAte, Hopefully I’m someone who helps make something, but yeah, I’m an ass on occasion.

That said, I had a family member ask me to use a pseudonym for a blog they were afraid would affect their work. And of course I did.

Timothy Markus wrote:I usually had 2-4 kids in my class with my name, and in one class 3 of us were in a row and the teacher called us Larry, Darryl and Darryl, after a TV show and it stuck, so I named my daughter Skye so she wouldn't have that problem.  She could never find anything with her name on it, as a kid, so that sucked for her, but she's quite happy to be different now.  People remember her name and, as she went to all-French school, she was often called Ciel, French for sky.

I had the same problem when I worked at a shipyard. There was 9000 workers there and (3) of us had the same name. I actually got sent down for a official reprimand for having too many injuries in a given time span...they had accidentally combined us three into one, and concluded it was me. Boy did they look sheepish when I said, "Are you sure you have the Travis Johnson because there are (3) of us here." I was gracious; the Union wanted to go after the company something bad, but I said it was an innocent mistake.

As for my children, I gave them regular names, but spelled them differently than most spellings. The ones in bold are how I spell my children's names.

Allison=Alyson
Kaylynn=Kaelyn

Disclaimer: This does not apply to all Travis's out there, but I absolutely hate my name. The second you say Travis, everyone knows you are in your mid-40's. I think it is against the law to name your child Travis outside of the 1970's. If you do a name chart for Travis, it shows its popularity is almost nothing prior too, and after the 1970's. Every one I know with this name...yep...born in the 1970's.

Even worse, it is a T-Name. I had a teacher in Elementary School who lamented when I said I was a Travis. He said "Not another T-Name. Kids with the first name that starts with T are trouble makers". I kind of was, and I have learned that for the most part that pattern holds true.

(This does not apply to all people with a T-Name, I am just saying that my teacher's thoughts have always held true in my experience so far).

Hmm...   A Boy Named Sue   <GG>

Reading through this thread, I sometimes giggled and sometimes wondered.

Germany has a very strict first-name policy (which only lately is getting more liberal), so there are no given names like Summer, Hunter etc. But there are also names that can be tied to a certain decade or regional area.

BTW, Mercedes is a traditional Spanish female name (one of the many variations on virgin Mary's names). There was a time when the car company had a campaign that said "Mercedes was a woman".

Rufus Laggren wrote:Hmm...   A Boy Named Sue   <GG>

This raises an interesting point, but probably beyond what we want to get into here.

As for the site, we don't ask people to say what gender/sex they are, so it doesn't matter.  

Hi Chris

I take a similar stand.  For decades my real name was published in the telephone book.  

I enjoy using this site and am not ashamed of the questions or replies I share. I do have a post I wish to make however, that asks for info flying contrary to “popular opinion” for some acquaintances. They’ve already had their say on the subject. I don’t wish to hear their ( unsolicited ) opinions any further. Is there a chance they actually browse this site, and will see the thread ? Probably not. However, I would prefer to not have my actual name appearing with my question, as I intend to relate specific info to help the discussion along. It won’t matter to others viewing this as an acedemic discussion, but for any with a selfish interest in the outcome of my projects - what they don’t know is helpful for me.

 So, my question is .... how exactly can I change my name appearing with posts to something a bit more vague ? Specifically, I want it to simply be “Bob D”, rather than full proper name of Robert & last name ?

I agree with others view that we should be accountable for what we say. I’m not worried about me. I resent the cowardice of those who use their arrogance freely to harass those of us who choose a humble, meek avoidance of conflict

Robert Dearborn wrote:I enjoy using this site and am not ashamed of the questions or replies I share. I do have a post I wish to make however, that asks for info flying contrary to “popular opinion” for some acquaintances. They’ve already had their say on the subject. I don’t wish to hear their ( unsolicited ) opinions any further. Is there a chance they actually browse this site, and will see the thread ? Probably not. However, I would prefer to not have my actual name appearing with my question, as I intend to relate specific info to help the discussion along. It won’t matter to others viewing this as an acedemic discussion, but for any with a selfish interest in the outcome of my projects - what they don’t know is helpful for me.

 So, my question is .... how exactly can I change my name appearing with posts to something a bit more vague ? Specifically, I want it to simply be “Bob D”, rather than full proper name of Robert & last name ?

I agree with others view that we should be accountable for what we say. I’m not worried about me. I resent the cowardice of those who use their arrogance freely to harass those of us who choose a humble, meek avoidance of conflict

You can post under any name you like, as long as it is a real-sounding name.  Charlie Jennings is no one's name as far as I know, but it sounds like a real name, so would be acceptable.

I resent the cowardice of those who use their arrogance freely to harass those of us who choose a humble, meek avoidance of conflict

That kind of behaviour is not allowed on permies.  If you see a post even hinting of that, then use the report button to bring it to the attention of the staff.  Every user who posts on permies agrees to be nice.  





To change the name, go to "my profile" at the top of the screen and there's some buttons there.

You can use a letter for your first name, but not the last.

But remember, it needs to be a "real-sounding" name.  

r ranson wrote:

I resent the cowardice of those who use their arrogance freely to harass those of us who choose a humble, meek avoidance of conflict

That kind of behaviour is not allowed on permies.  If you see a post even hinting of that, then use the report button to bring it to the attention of the staff.  Every user who posts on permies agrees to be nice

Allow me to clarify .... I’ve not experienced that behavior here. I was speaking of what I’m enduring in “real life” and other forums as I try to gather info. My apologies for inferring otherwise. Thank you to all the wonderful contributors here.

This week seems to be a week where a lot of people just seem to feel the urge to fuck with the staff over names.  It is extremely tempting to simply lock all accounts that smell a bit off so the staff can focus on talking about seeds and natural building and stuff.  But the staff is loaded with people that are kinder than I am and wish to handle each case separately - maybe THIS person isn't a douchebag trying to fuck with us.  

"Yes, my REAL NAME really is 'Goat Fucker7' - this is the name I have gone by all of my life.  My parents gave me this name.  It's on my birth certificate and my driver's license.  "

All of the staff are hyper focused on "what do we do to infect the word with permaculture thoughts for all of the reasons?"   We know it will be thousands of little steps.   And our work is impeded by another douchebag wanting to fuck with us about some name.  "Hey Steve!  Watch while I fuck with the staff with THIS name!"  "Oh shit!  They bought it as a real name!  They're so fucking stupid!"


Simply:   I made this site to talk about the stuff I like in a way I like.  This seems to work great with thousands of people.  If it doesn't work for you, then good luck on your next adventure to find your favorite community.  

paul wheaton wrote:Simply:   I made this site to talk about the stuff I like in a way I like.  This seems to work great with thousands of people.  If it doesn't work for you, then good luck on your next adventure to find your favorite community.  

I'm an Admin for a number of social media accounts (for myself and for clients).  I work hard to keep it all civil and keep it within the parameters of the purpose of each site.  There's always a troll now and again. I know it's stupid of me, but I take it personally when someone spews nastiness on one of my accounts.  I point out what you say -- the site was set up to talk about stuff the owner wants to talk about in a way the owner wants to talk about it.  Nobody has to stay at the party if they don't like it.  And yet there's always a few who want to just come to the party to be ugly.

PS -- I'm one of those people who the staff here questioned about my name.  Yup, my real name.  Just like that (except with middle name, too) on my drivers' license, passport and all.  

Understanding and willingness to work with us on the name policy thing is probably the best indicator if the person is a good fit for permies and permies is a good fit for them.

When people come into conflict with the name policy, it usually means they will come into conflict with other aspects of how this site is run.

One interesting nuance to this topic that doesn't seem to be getting much airtime is that "real sounding" is super subjective and (perhaps naively on my part) appears to be mostly influenced by western/colonial roots.

A westerner can jam together a common first name and a slightly less common last name as a pseudonym and be pretty confident that it will fit in with the other "real names" on this forum. However, as an example, I'm guessing quite a few of the top names someone from South Africa might consider normal (ref: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/the-most-popular-names-in-south-africa-right-now-2018-8 ) wouldn't pass that same test. (e.g. "Junior", "Gift", "Prince", "Innocent")

I'm not trying to start a fight here or attack the idea of promoting a certain flavor for this forum, but I do want to point out that it creates a kind of bias and potential inertia against greater multiculturalism if an existing population is dictating whose names do or don't "sound real".

Why should some folks have to be more careful about using their name or choosing pseudonyms from their proximal culture(s) than others? Does that really promote the flavor this forum seeks to cook up?

Honestly, when I see a name in another language, I assume it's real. I often look names up on google to see if they are common names.

As for names like Forrest or Gift or Junior, if they're paired with a known surname, I tend to think their parents named them that. So, a Gift Johnson or Junior Kimathi, I'd probably think were real-sounding. But, if someone was named Gift Present or Junior Woodchucker, I'd say that name is not a real-sounding name.

Now, it could be that a person really was named Cherry Woods or Prince George. In which case, we'd ask them to change their name, and then they'd nicely tell us that, yes, that really was their name. And we'd be able to let those sorts of names be here because we don't have 15,000 people falsely saying their name is Blue Bird or Alpha Omega or Strong Smith or Black Berry.

We actually spend a lot of time behind the scenes looking into names. It'd be nice if people didn't try to go by Weorge Gashington or Fairy Fields when it's not their name.

If you don't want to use your real name, that's a-okay. Just pick a non-suspicious name so the people who do have unusual names can go by them.

Em Bracken wrote:One interesting nuance to this topic that doesn't seem to be getting much airtime is that "real sounding" is super subjective and (perhaps naively on my part) appears to be mostly influenced by western/colonial roots.

I made a web site that is a certain flavor of website.  To talk about the things I want to talk about the way I want to talk about them.   And the name thing.  This is not "the" web site, this is "a" web site.  

So I made this site and ... well ...  it seems that my recipe worked.  The site became rather large.  

And along the way more than a thousand people have pointed out that my recipe is wrong.   Or that it is not working.  And yet .... here we are.

Yes, it is subjective.  And I am the subject in question.   I suppose the real sounding name thing is a whim - but I really like it.   And it has drawn about .... uh ....   let's see, your user account number is 325107 ... wow, over 325,000 people!   And that's just the people that took the time to create an account!   There's over a million people looking each month.  

Yes, there are other recipes and there are good reasons to use other recipes.  But I like this recipe.  

you can put your "everyone knows me by this name" name in your signature.  That way you can still meet the real sounding name policy, and everyone will know who you are.

For example, the famous author (and most awesome guy) David the Good is known throughout the world as "David the Good" but here he uses the real-sounding name David Goodman and puts his real name in the signature.  I told you he was awesome!

So... my "name" is wcbpolish... which is in no way a real sounding name... but it's me... It's sort of the opposite of hiding my identity.  I have a pretty common sounding real name, so way back in high school (early 2000's) I used the letter abbreviation for the breed of chicken - White Crested Black Polish - that I raised (then and still now) as my email address... and then in college it became my screen name for everything... blogs, online gaming, etc.  Google my real name and you get a million hits, few relating to me; google wcbpolish and you get info about me... or the breed of chicken.  

So I use my "screen name" to link myself to the rest of my online presence.

I know it makes it "weird" to respond to me... I mean, how to you talk to someone named "wcbpolish"?  Most people just say something like "hey polish...."

So my name does not look like a real name, but it is my online moniker.  I've never been told to change it to something more "real" I don't want to change it at all... but I also don't want to be in violation of community standards...


(Edit... I submitted this... and then realized that my real name is how I am listed on the site, LOL)  But I am wcbpolish.... I must have been asked to use my real name and just not realized it!)

You could add "wcbpolish" to your signature.  

I just use my real name. No woman would stalk me...ever. I ain't afraid of anyone in here. I maintain nice and don't abuse staff. I'm pretty safe🙂

Something to mention - saying it's not your real name instantly makes it not real-sounding.  

Maybe some people want to edit their post?  

I have a theory about inexplicable name changes. I believe there were some at intake places like Ellis Island that wouldn't care too much how a name was spelled. They'd write down something close and suddenly that was your new name.
This is just a theory I came up with sitting in a deer stand on a cold winter morning when wondering about things like this.