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Sea_Cow
You miss my point. That story was the reason why I chose the name Sea_Cow.

And missed it I did.

But I thank you anyways. Remembering that tale was most pleasing to me.

Sea Cow is slang for manatee in case you really missed it.

(Well played, Lefarce. Well played.)

Okay, genuine answer. Around the time of checking this site out, I had been studying up on Slavic mythology, intrigued by a mixture of what I read prior of it as well as the style of classical art associated with the beliefs.

Chernobog, meaning Black God, was particularly interesting due to the obscure record of reference concerning him. 'May or may not have existed'. That sort of reflects my online persona. I'm on several forums under different names, mostly reading, and only occasionally making myself heard. Rarely do I become a 'forum personality' and even then, someone of a low tier of reputation. The Black God part is merely my melancholy and often dour mindset as a person, rather than anything relating to a forum identity.

It also has a nice unpleasant phonetic sound to it.

My regular name is gender nonspecific and wouldn't be anything identifying even if I did use it. My other main online handle has since been retired. I used to be a webcomic critic for some years on another site and to be blunt, but I was not well liked. Obsessive fanboys, to little surprise, don't like finding out someone else on earth could possibly consider their favorite comic to be cliche and mediocre. I don't think my boss assigned me much of anything from Drunk Duck except Hero By Night, and I know that one got a very positive review.

Niccea
Sea Cow is slang for manatee in case you really missed it.

Oh I knew that but for some reasons, the idea that he was telling me the story of how he picked his user name slipped past me.

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it's just that it's unpronounceable to most of you.

I'd like to give it a go... but I'd really need to look up how to say those wierd letters... "ae" and letters with circles attached.

Niccea
I'm an American and Americans can't even pronounce my name. I don't mind saying it cause it is a commonish name. Clara.

Yeah, that's strange... I've noticed that a lot of Americans can have trouble saying the word "Mirror", instead of saying it with a distinct double sylable "mi-ror", they tend to say something that sounds like "meer".
Not all Americans do that of course, but a good few that I've heard do.

Is it a similar thing with your name I wonder? A little issue that some people have with sylables, "L" and "r" sounds in certain combinations...?
That wouldn't be unusual, like the Chinese and Japanese have issues with "l" and "r" in English.

I've noticed that I myself slip into lazy "Australian" pronounciations of some words, where certain sylables and sounds are blurred, and so sound different to the norm.

Hmh... 'catcatdragoo'.... Now there's a long story. ^w^

But, In short, it's the very first username I ever came up with, so I have some sentiment towards it. :3 I didn't think up a 'persona' till later. :3

Which is, of course, a green cat with red eyes, tiny dragon wings, two tails and a little pokie of hair curling up (influenced by anime hair). :3
And I luuurves hiiim. ^w^ ~ <333333333333333333333333333333

Actually I just think that it is cause Claire is a more common name.

And I understand the mirror thing. It took forever for me to learn how to pronounce owl correctly. I still can't pronounce crayon, but that really isn't what this thread is about...

ozoneocean

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it's just that it's unpronounceable to most of you.

I'd like to give it a go... but I'd really need to look up how to say those wierd letters... "ae" and letters with circles attached.

Oh, you mean æ and ó and ö. We also have ð and þ and é and á and.... I'm getting ahead of myself.

Alright then. My full name is Einar Örn Gissurarson.

Now I already mentioned the "A"-nar part. You also need to aggressively roll ALL the "r". You need to click the "n" at the end of Örn in addition to learning how to properly pronounce the "ö" which sounds kinda like a throw up sound. Say the "Gissurar" part fast and the "son" part slow.

That about covers it.

If you can provide me with a sound recording of your attempt I'll grade it for you if you like. So far no one, not fluent in Icelandic has gotten it right. Not even my wife. Well.. she only fumbles on my middle name now.

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That about covers it.

I can do the first and last parts :)
But I could never be sure of the middle- that depends on how good your instructions were and how good my understanding of them was, rather than just the difficulty of the name.

I'm much better with imitation. :(
That said, pronoucing Cyrilic letters is hard (for me), even with imitation- because it's not just a matter of making similar sounds, but making them in a specific way.

And I never have been able to roll my "rrrr"s, people that can irritate me! :gem:

Rolling your "r" is essential for speaking Icelandic. Since English doesn't teach you how to use that sound as you grow up, learning how to do it in later life can be incredibly difficult. I pretty much explained the "Ö" sound to the best of my ability. It's basically the sound you make when you're pretending to throw up. Clicking the "n" works like this: First you say "ör-" part. then instead of saying "n" you build up air pressure behind your nose and make a clicking sound coming from your nasal cavity. Don't forget to roll your "r" before doing that in addition to making that funny "ö" sound beforehand.

Yeah. My language has plenty of funny things like that.

I hope this exercise provided you with a good explanation in why I don't use my real name in forums.

ozoneocean
And I never have been able to roll my "rrrr"s, people that can irritate me! :gem:

According to my friend's mom, to roll your "r" you have to:

curve your tongue upward like a hard taco shell on the floor of your mouth.
press your hard palate down on it slightly,
keep the back of your tongue raised slightly near the roof of your mouth.

Then you try to breathe a pretty substantial "r" sound.

It worked for me, although I could never make that sound before, but it is damned hard to describe how it works.

EDIT: Also, now I can do it just by raising the back of my tongue and lowering the front, which I guess is how you are meant to do it. But the taco thing, that totally helped me learn how. o_O

ozoneocean

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That about covers it.

I can do the first and last parts :)
But I could never be sure of the middle- that depends on how good your instructions were and how good my understanding of them was, rather than just the difficulty of the name.

I'm much better with imitation. :(
That said, pronoucing Cyrilic letters is hard (for me), even with imitation- because it's not just a matter of making similar sounds, but making them in a specific way.

And I never have been able to roll my "rrrr"s, people that can irritate me! :gem:

well if you understand the international-wowel-symbols then it would be pronounced or . Other then that you just have to hear it, then you can understand it but I like PP's explanation of how to produce it:P

Ochitsukanai
According to my friend's mom, to roll your "r" you have to:

curve your tongue upward like a hard taco shell on the floor of your mouth.
press your hard palate down on it slightly,
keep the back of your tongue raised slightly near the roof of your mouth.

Then you try to breathe a pretty substantial "r" sound.

It worked for me, although I could never make that sound before, but it is damned hard to describe how it works.

EDIT: Also, now I can do it just by raising the back of my tongue and lowering the front, which I guess is how you are meant to do it. But the taco thing, that totally helped me learn how. o_O

Come to think of it, I don't notice that I roll my "r"'s when I speak Icelandic, cause like PP said it's pretty essential, but sometimes when I talk english I have to think about my "r" XD

It's a pen name, basically.

Few years ago I was writing a novel that had some shocking stuff in it (things like jesus having sex with hitler etc.) and since I live in a rather religious country, I thought a pen name would be a wise idea (I get called a "satanist" for my long hair anyway so I didn't care that much about myself but I certainly didn't want to have anyone harassing my brother and his family) and using a somewhat feminine name would throw off anyone trying to locate me... well, the novel never got finished (it'll be done once I trim out all the things I put there purely for shock value and then I'll redo everything as a graphic novel) but the name stuck.

I use it because:

1) it's fairly easy to remember
2) it's easy to pronounce for foreigners (unlike my real last name)
3) it can function both as a nickname and full name (aurora being a real name after all)
4) I like it :D

I don't use my real name online because:

1) I have issues with my first name. It's terribly common over here (especially among my generation, so much that there was three or four of us in some classes and there's at least three more living in my block... my best friend before I went to school shared the same name, my best friend throughout the last 15 years has shared the same name and mybrother's best friend from back in the day ALSO had the same name thus I dislike it as being too common and widespread).
2) My second name confuses everyone who tries to pronounce it. Furthermore, I can't find the right characters to write down the pronounciation in a way that could be understood by an English language speaking person (the nearest I could get it's something between French and Chinese, haha). So it'd be confusing to use it. I'm always ashamed when I butcher someone's name, so I'd rather not put others into the same situation.

So, I've been signing all my drawings and writing with Aurora Borealis since hmm... 2002 or so.

When I was young I had to pick a username for a pokemon forum (or something)so I chose pineapple. I have no idea why, I dob't even like pineapples that much. I tried to eat a whole one once and my mouth started bleeding.

Product Placement there will be character in go a Viking! named Einar which is usually explained as being pronunced eye-nar (including text books on the early Middle Ages! Is that Icelandic versus Norwegian (or Old Norse) pronounciation?)

My first name is always mangled. Stephen. It's supposed to be StEEf-en, but people go with Steven or Stef-fen.

I gave up on the last name years ago even though the middle syllable is spelled and pronounced like "though" or "dough" Anyone who didn't watch the Twilight Zone episode "A Stop at Willoughby" usually misprounces it. I've considered changing it to one of the 17th century spellings when the same person's name was spelled six different ways in six different documents. lol! Good old Captain Thomas Willoughby/Wilobee/Wylughby/Willoughbe/Willoby etc...

Willoughby=Willow+Bee.

We have a town nearby by that name here in Ohio and I remember the Twilight Episode you mentioned. It had to do with a business man tired of his life and wife and wanted to get away, with the wacky M. Night Shamalamdindong twist at the end. Quite fresh and original back then and perhaps surprising if saw in when it first aired but I just saw it recently and saw the ending coming.

I love the twilight zone. Sometimes it's really hilarious, especially really really late at night.

The story behind my username is one filled with a girl, love, green hair and a T-shirt.

The summer vaction before I started high school. Me and my friends went to the Harry Potter Midnight bash party thing. A friend of said friends came along. She was very cute and very nice, needless to say I had the biggest crush of my life. Out of the blue she called me, "The Flying Green Monkey." She had put my green hair together with my T-shirt, which read, "It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack." I kept the name but when I finally confessed 4 years later she turned me down. I confessed by willing her my heart in the senoir will that is published in the schools newspaper. She wouldn't have even said anything if it wasn't for a friend asking her to. She broke my heart :( I consently thinking about changeing it, but I've used it for over 4yrs.

bravo1102
Product Placement there will be character in go a Viking! named Einar which is usually explained as being pronunced eye-nar (including text books on the early Middle Ages! Is that Icelandic versus Norwegian (or Old Norse) pronounciation?)

No Scandinavian would pronounce Einar like "eye-nar". Written down, that pronunciation would spell "Ænar". Einar is a strong warriors name ("one who fights alone"/"an army of one" type of stuff) and thus it's pretty popular to be given to boys in Scandinavia. The Norwegian/Swedish/Danish pronunciations are similar to the Icelandic one. It's always English speakers who end up saying my name like that however it's relatively close to my name so I accept it when I'm addressed in that way. I'm assuming that most others who share my name have done the same which is why you've end up hearing that it's spoken like that.

We only know how Old Norse was written, not pronounced. Out of all the Scandinavian languages, Icelandic has changed the least. 1000 year old rune stones in Norway and Sweden can easily be read by any Icelander without training... provided that he knows how to convert the runes into Latin lettering. However there is no way of knowing if our pronunciation has changed over time short of going back in time and try to talk to a Viking settler.

TheFlyingGreenMonkey
She broke my heart :(

I'm sorry to hear that GreenMonkey. Unfortunately, despite what most Hollywood movies says, publicly admitting your love to the secret crush rarely works out. Most of the time the girl becomes embarrassed, especially if she was on the fence about it.

Yeah half the girls afterward told be it was cute and romantic and the rest told me it was slightly creepy. Curse you HOLLYWOOD!!! Curse you for putting romanticly creepy thoughts into my head!

TheFlyingGreenMonkey
Curse you HOLLYWOOD!!! Curse you for putting romanticly creepy thoughts into my head!

Heh. Don't worry. You're still far from becoming this guy .

I named myself Puff of Smoke because I used to be a spritecomicfag. I used to have a puff of smoke sprite thingy.

But now, I hate sprite comics. So the name might aswell be random. I don't smoke. I'm no chimney sweeper.

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TheFlyingGreenMonkey
Curse you HOLLYWOOD!!! Curse you for putting romanticly creepy thoughts into my head!

Heh. Don't worry. You're still far from becoming this guy .

Yeah. Still don't know if I should change it or not. $$PoorBoyBlues$$, DeathFromAbove, AIDS, STDS were all usernames I used before.

I just chose this user name because I like Walruses. And for the record, my name isn't Ben Robinson, it's a pen name. I'll never reveal my true identity, I'm too paranoid.

Walrus
I just chose this user name because I like Walruses. And for the record, my name isn't Ben Robinson, it's a pen name. I'll never reveal my true identity, I'm too paranoid.

What made you pick Ben Robinson as a pen name?

I always try to use machinehead for my user name. It's my favorite name and it's easy for me to remember. I'm pretty sure my name would be easy to remember too. But I like the band better.

(back a bit) I can't roll my r's. Never have been able to after three years of Spanish class. But my teachers never learned that I couldn't. Instead of using my tongue, I would vibrate the back of my throat (like a singer's vibrato) and it sufficed. Even got compliments on it. Compared to a native, everyone would know that my r's are fake...but I don't have that worry.

(to FGM) Sorry man. Could be worse. My boyfriend (then just lunch buddy) told one of my closish friends that he was going to ask me out. And she told my math teachers. When I went to class that day they had a superior look on their faces. "So, Clara, I heard someone is going to ask you out to the Band Banquet..." I laughed about it with him and some other friends and he lost his nerves...I asked him out a year later to the band banquet. And the only person that knew beforehand was my mom. (Since she was the one pestering me to.)

(Back to the actual topic of this thread) Also, Niccea comes from the name of one of my favorite book characters. Only her name was Nicci. I just refined it a little.

my mom named me Pit-Face on account of the b.o. problem i was born with.

Not much of a long story on where we got this name but when we were still in high school, we were put under Year 3, Section 7 named 'Sagittarius' and probably the most wackiest section ever. Ah, memories indeed and no, it's not our zodiac sign, we're both Gemini. ;)

wait, there's two of you?...or more?

My real name is boring. Plus, using a different screen name for everything lets me get away with a lot more.