What are the origins of your penname?

[Lady Mage]

Hey all. For a long time, I've been curious about the origins of some people's pennames, so I decided to start a thread. Why did you choose that particular one?

Here we go:

Penname: Magewhisperer/azuremage/Lady Mage
Why did you choose it? I chose magewhisperer because I wanted a Tamora Piercy penname, since that was the kind of fanfiction I mostly wanted to write. That was two years ago. Now, I'm much more versatile, but it's still my penname.
How does it fit in with your genre? Well, for those of you Tamora Pierce fans out there, magewhisper is Neal's horse. I thought that sounded pretty cool, and the name was only mentioned once or twice in Protector of the Small, so I thought I was safe. Apparently not, for when I went to get the yahoo email adress to correspond, it was allready taken. So, being the quick-thinking young whippersnapper I am, I decided to add another 'er' and make it magewhisperER. The nickname 'mage' came when I got Al to join the site and she nicknamed everybody. Azure Mage came when I was sick of being magewhisperer. It actually comes from Mercedes Lackey's books. There's a Shin'a'in named Azuremind, and that set me off on an azure phase. I like it well enough. As for Lady Mage, that's a new addition, and I felt positively medieval, so I decided to go with it. Besides, we need at least two "Lady" Global Moderators. It's tradition. And Idril isn't a lady and more.

Now, guys, it's your turn!!! You don't have to use the form I used... just whatever floats your boat!

[Meluivan Indil]

Well, I've told several of you this but here it is. My real name is Melissa Sue. Meluivan Indil is the Tolkien Sindarin Elvish version of my real name. I got the translation of it from the Council of Elrond website. The litteral meaning of Melissa is either Honey Bee or Sweet of Face. In Tolkien's elvish there is no Honey Bee but Sweet of Face becomes Meluivan. And Sue and Indil mean Lily.

When I first chose my name I was very big into LotR and I also used the name Lily in my PotO fics because it is one of my favorite names and my favorite flower.

I have never considered using a different penname and probably never will.

M.

[Lady Idril]

Well, I'm LadyIdril or Idril on here, and IdrilThePirate on FFnet.

I have a penpal whom I've been talking with for nearly four years, and shortly after we met we both entered our names into several translators (Japanese name translators, Elvish name translators, etc) for the fun of it. I got the name "Idril" from an Elvish translator and the nickname stuck, my friend got the Japenese name "Maki" and we've continued to call eachother by those names ever since.

Idril is best known as the wife of Tuor from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, which I've unfortunately never read. One day I'll get my hands on a copy of it and take the time to read it.

Everyone who knows me knows I'm the world's biggest Pirates of the Caribbean fan, so that's where IdrilThePirate comes from. The "lady" in LadyIdril is for no particular reason, except that I wrote/write/read a lot of King Arthur fanfiction and "Lady" is just appropriate.

[Lady Mage]

That's cool, where are all the generators from?

mage

[Lady Idril]

M got hers at Council of Elrond and I got mine from the translator by Chris Wetherell, here. He also has a Hobbit Name Generator.

[Lady Mage]

Man, I wish I knew about this when I was trying to figure out my penname. There are so many great things out there. But I'm happy with AzureMage. And I've had magewhisperer for so long I don't want to confuse any of my fans. So that's that.

mage

[Anime Monster]

Well my penname started before I even knew what fan fiction was as my yahoo email account came before the pen name (it's the answer to the question what came first the chicken or the egg!).

Anyways, I had just found out what anime was and I was just starting becoming a fan. At the time e-mail was a bit new to me, but I wanted an anime email address, I already had books4me1988 (that account is probably dead and rotting) and AngleODeath (also probably rotting, and also an example of me and my poor spelling as I met Angel), but I wanted something with the word anime in it. So I started trying names. Animegirl, Animefan, Animefangirl, Animegurl, and I put numbers that corresponded to my birthyear 1988.

Frustrated when I found all those names taken I thought hard. That's when I chose AnimeMonster. The Monster comes from Pokemon (Pocket Monsters) which was an anime I was into at the time. And I thought about it, I was like, hmm...Monsters eat everything in front of them (Godzilla was also on my mind) and so an Anime Monster would gobble up all the anime...so I became animemonster88 on the internet.

The name stuck, but I started calling myself Anime Monster (or Anime, Anime-san, AnimeMon) all over the place. And I've never had the heart to change it, shorten it, etc. The name is now as much, if not more, my name than Sandra is.