What's in a Name
A little while ago I saw this poem about friends from LiveJournal and I also think about the ones I had from back then. I wonder what they're doing with their lives, if some of them are married and have started their own families now, or maybe some of them have passed away due to something like cancer. I know one of them did have cancer while we were following each other twenty some years ago, but was in remission last I had heard from them.
The trails we leave across the Internet are winding, and for some people it's easier to follow than others. Many latched onto Facebook with their real names in the mid-late '00s and made that their footprint, which was also a bridge that some of us crossed with friends who we only knew by aliases of our own creation for years prior. Oh, so your first name is really Jay? It's not that much of a surprise since your username was usually shortened to "j" on the forum but good to know anyway. A few people have had their own site since the '90s, a beacon that can always be found in the same place even if it's isolated from what is now called the Social Internet. I haven't had such a solid foundation, but I have retained the same identity as I shift around from place to place and wonder if people from one site have recognized me at another without my knowing.
I frequented AOL fantasy roleplaying chat rooms in the late '90s, one of my earlier ways of interacting with other people on the Internet. Your AOL username was what showed up in the chat so I created new users under my parents' account to fit the characters I wanted to play, separate from the one I used to chat with my real life friends from school. Durinthal was originally an invention for that purpose, a new character when I wanted to play as a dwarf rather than the elf named Silverfrost (or was it Silvyrfrost) that I had been using previously. I hadn't yet read Tolkien to know about the line of dwarven kings named Durin or the Norse mythology he had copied it from, but I did have a family member who might have mentioned it off-hand and subconsciously influenced me when I was trying to think of a name that sounded appropriate.
Around the same time I began exploring other avenues of being social online. I kept using Durinthal when interacting with the strangers of the world as I did have some sense of privacy in keeping my name to myself even if I was painfully honest when responding to "A/S/L?" for a time. From AOL message boards to LiveJournal and other sites on the world wide web that began popping up, that was generally the moniker I went by. It was easy for me to remember, rarely taken by someone else before I got there (to the other Durinthal on BoardGameGeek: Who are you?), and my activity under that name generally represented the personality I wanted to show to the world. Here I am, everywhere I go.
Over time it became as much a part of my identity as my real name and the primary version of me online outside of Facebook which I touch less than once a year these days. You can trace me from AOL to LiveJournal to OC ReMix to the Unreal Tournament 2004 clan I was part of (the first time hearing other people call me that over voice chat) to xkcd's lost fora to Twitter to Reddit to Bluesky to here, among hundreds if not thousands of other places online. It even became a part of my meatspace identity through conventions like PAX where I and the other Enforcers go by a handle that's usually not our government name. I've been called Duri (because it's shorter) in person more times than I can count now, and it makes me happy that people know me that way.
It may be a bit cringe-inducing to use a name I came up with as a young teenager and I know many other people who have abandoned the ones they used at that point in their lives. It's also a name I'm proud of for being mine as in something that was my own creation, not something that was foisted upon me by my parents before I or anyone knew what I was going to be like as a person. It's more of a True Name for me than what's on my driver's license.
To that end I've thought of another name I like for myself, something that wouldn't give an average person pause if they saw it on a passport. For now it's secret for a multitude of reasons I don't want to get into here, but it's similarly mine. Perhaps one day I'll use it beyond semi-anonymous donation credits, and perhaps one day I'll even link it with Durinthal publicly online somewhere.
Perhaps that day I'll become fully my own self.