Jump to content

How did you choose your Geocaching name?


Degai

Recommended Posts

Our three girls are all grown up now - two with families, the youngest just out of college - but when they were young, three little girls running around the place, especially if they had friends over, could be quite chaotic at times. If they were being particularly rambunctious, and the phone rang, I'd often answer it, "Hello, Chaos Manor." Friends and family got used to this, and even employers and other regular callers came to expect this greeting. Haven't answered the phone that way in years, but when we started caching, it just seemed natural to use this as our handle. And when the grandkids come over, it's just like old times! :laughing:

 

BTW: this is also our letterboxing handle.

Link to comment

I'm pretty sure this is already a pretty extensive thread over in general topics if you want to learn more faster. For us it's pretty easy. "Fox" is actually his real name and with a bad knee I tend to almost always be following on our hiking trips. He has a tendency to go in a straight line bushwacking or climbing regardless of terrain while I tend to zigzag like a "Hound" on his trail trying to keep up. :laughing:

Link to comment

My handle used to be Droodles, a nickname from a lifetime ago. On a caching hunt a couple of years ago I met a group of fellow cachers, one of whom had a hard time hearing the "-dles" part of my nickname. For Shirconn I shortened the name.

You can change your handle if you wish and all your logs will go with you, but your old caches will still be listed "by (old name)" until you edit them.

Link to comment

I am not so sure we can change names as easily as we used to....

 

I started caching about the same time that we were shopping for a new diesel pickup. We were hauling around six of us then, the rattle from the diesel engine and crew from the mandatory big cab we needed. We still drive diesel trucks, but no longer need the crew cab. It was the geomachine at the time. I always liked the sound of the diesel rattle, I know... :laughing: I even like the smell of the raw fuel... Some of the rich settings on the cuty buses and trash trucks can produce exhaust that can about gag me though.

 

I think the affection for the diesel is from fond farming memories as a young man....

 

Glen

Link to comment

i used to be ehrelnmeyer flask, but it got to be too much to type.

 

i used to have a thing for lab glass; i belonged to a social club called graduated cylinder. in my misspent youth i wrote a concert march called ehrlenmyer flask. and one called flaps and grommets. ok, so i'm a little odd. cope.

Link to comment

I had just watched all 5 hours of An Evening With Kevin Smith the day before I discovered geocaching. The part where they (Smith & Mewes) explained the evolution of the word "Snoogans" which means basically "I'm kidding," or "I'm kidding, please don't kick my as$," depending on what was said, stood out in my mind after briefly considering Zaphod Beeblebrox as a handle. The rest is history. My handle has become part of me.

Link to comment

Okay, this is weird. I was thinking of starting a thread on this topic today, and here it is. :laughing:

 

I guess my name originally came from a Melanie Rawn book, but that was almost thirteen years ago. I've been using it, and variations on it, as a roleplaying handle for that long, in both tabletop and online RPGs, so I just adopted it for geocaching, too. :) (Drives people crazy, trying to pronounce it the correct, Gaelic way, which I'm pretty sure is SH-neva, but I could be wrong. That's how *I* pronounce it, though. :))

Link to comment

Okay, this is weird. I was thinking of starting a thread on this topic today, and here it is. :laughing:

I guess my name originally came from a Melanie Rawn book, but that was almost thirteen years ago.

 

Heh. I *thought* I'd seen it somewhere before... although I can only vaguely remember the details of that series.

 

Point of note - warning, I'm about to wax pedantic :) :

 

There isn't any such thing as " the correct Celtic way" to pronounce a word or name, because there isn't any such thing as a language called "Celtic".

There are a number of related languages still spoken in the countries/cultures thought of as "Celtic", including Irish Gaelic aka Erse, Scots Gaelic, Cymraeg (Welsh), and Breton (spoken in Brittany), but each one has its own rules of spelling and pronunciation - same as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, etc, are lumped under the general heading of "Romance languages", but the words, spelling and pronunciation of each are distinct and different.

 

<pedantic mode mostly off>

 

Anyhoo - FWIW, "Sion" is the Welsh equivalent of the English name "John" and the Irish "Sean", so to my eye "Sioneva" reads roughly "Shahn-eva"... although there is no "V" in Welsh.

(I can't reproduce the Welsh vowel "io" correctly in written English, but "Sion" has a slightly different sound than "Sean", and both are a bit different than the bastardized American version,"Shawn").

 

Getting back to the subject of personal name origin... I use Cimawr, which means "Big Dog" in Welsh, on a number of different forums. Ci=dog, Mawr=big/great; in Welsh, the adjectives go after the main word instead of before as they do in English.

Ci is prounouced roughly "key", and "mawr" roughly "mah-oor", with the "r' rolled. ("mawr" is actually only one syllable, but if I don't put the hyphen in there, the English-reading eye sees it as ma-hoor :) )

Best bet for English speakers is to say it Key-mar, same as they say Brin Mar for "Bryn Mawr" (which means "Big Hill".)

 

As to WHY "Cimawr" - the Big Dog thing is a old, old in-joke with some of my family and friends, having to do with the fact that I train and compete in NADAC agility with my own dogs, and used to work as a professional dog exerciser, handling off-leash packs of 6-9 dogs , which makes me the "big dog" in terms of pack authority… but I'm a small person (just under 5' and around 105 lb).

It was also orginally a reference to the U.S. marshal character played by Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive", as in "Don't make the Big Dog cranky."

 

And "Cimawr" is both distinctive and uncommon, so it's a good ID.

 

(Oh, and no, I don't actually speak Cymraeg, unfortunately; I've never gotten much past "Hello", "Good afternoon", "Thank you" "It's miserable out today" and "I like coffee". However, one of my sisters lives in Wales and is fluent.)

Edited by cimawr
Link to comment

In our case it is "evolution" (and fortunately before the "name change" lockdown last June).

 

When we started in August 05, we used "hairymon" which is a play on my first and last name and is what I use for my email address, etc. (surprisingly, it was already taken on eBay by someone in the UK so I actually use my first/middle initial and my last name for that).

 

But when we heard of the name change lockdown, my wife noted that since 95+% of our finds are done together (and with our kids), she thought we should change it now while we can and came up with our current name, which is the first two letters of each of our first names, as well as that of our pet ferret (no haven't taken him on a hunt yet :laughing:)

Edited by HaLiJuSaPa
Link to comment

We've been doing search and rescue work for several years; I run bloodhounds, hence the name "sarhound" (search and rescue hound.) Deputyhound has been in law enforcement for most of his working life, so "Deputy" was a natural, but once we married and he got adopted by the hounds, he became "Deputyhound."

 

The hounds themselves use their own names when they help find a cache...

Link to comment

I lost the bet!

 

No, realy it's what the kids at work call me, stands for Grumpy Old Fart.

They didn't think I knew till one day one of them ask me why when I told him to do something.

You should have seen there faces when I replied "Because the GOF says so!"

Link to comment

While in the Air Force, I was a ground radio technician, which was nicknamed Ground Rat (Ground Radio). The divided the career field into two separate fields, one being Air Traffic Control, and the other being Tactical. My career field was then Tactical Radio, which I shortened to TacRat.

 

73,

KE5EHZ

Link to comment

I used to be really into the old Commodore 64 games, one of which was called Nonterraqueous, meaning "not of the land or sea." That was their definition, anyway. I won't argue the slight misnomer. I asked someone what "nonaeroterraqueous" would mean, and the reply I got was that if it wasn't of the air, land or water, then it was probably something spiritual.

 

The way I see it is that it's a cross between two Bible verses. One says that God made man in his own image. The other says that we shall not make gods in the image of anything in the air, on the land or in the water below. Hence, God made humans in His own image, which is not of the air, land or water.

 

I wish I had kept it to something simple, like "Mark," or "Tall skinny guy," or "a couple of cachers." Oh, well.

Link to comment

Mine was given to me by a local cacher named Hawk-eye due to my evil hides at the time. Before that I went as JC364.

 

Some people read more into my name than they should. I once donated a staff as first prize for a TB race only to have it refused because of my name and the rumor that I wrote on each staff that "This is the first step towards hell!" I've never written that in my life. I love God

 

Funny how rumors start. Someone passed on a staff valued at 130.00 out of ignorance.

 

El Diablo

Link to comment

Okay, this is weird. I was thinking of starting a thread on this topic today, and here it is. :laughing:

I guess my name originally came from a Melanie Rawn book, but that was almost thirteen years ago.

 

Heh. I *thought* I'd seen it somewhere before... although I can only vaguely remember the details of that series.

 

Point of note - warning, I'm about to wax pedantic :) :

 

There isn't any such thing as " the correct Celtic way" to pronounce a word or name, because there isn't any such thing as a language called "Celtic".

There are a number of related languages still spoken in the countries/cultures thought of as "Celtic", including Irish Gaelic aka Erse, Scots Gaelic, Cymraeg (Welsh), and Breton (spoken in Brittany), but each one has its own rules of spelling and pronunciation - same as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, etc, are lumped under the general heading of "Romance languages", but the words, spelling and pronunciation of each are distinct and different.

 

<pedantic mode mostly off>

 

Anyhoo - FWIW, "Sion" is the Welsh equivalent of the English name "John" and the Irish "Sean", so to my eye "Sioneva" reads roughly "Shahn-eva"... although there is no "V" in Welsh.

(I can't reproduce the Welsh vowel "io" correctly in written English, but "Sion" has a slightly different sound than "Sean", and both are a bit different than the bastardized American version,"Shawn").

 

<snip>

 

*grin* It's the SH sound in the name that they have trouble with - because there is no h in it! But they're getting it. Gradually. :) I know the V is a problem, if you think of it as a Welsh name, but I'd rather have Sioneva then Sionefa! :)

Link to comment

Mine was given to me by a local cacher named Hawk-eye due to my evil hides at the time. Before that I went as JC364.

 

Some people read more into my name than they should. I once donated a staff as first prize for a TB race only to have it refused because of my name and the rumor that I wrote on each staff that "This is the first step towards hell!" I've never written that in my life. I love God

 

Funny how rumors start. Someone passed on a staff valued at 130.00 out of ignorance.

 

El Diablo

 

If you still have the staff, I'll take it! :laughing:

Link to comment

mine are signed copies. :laughing: Those two are a hoot!

 

I'm envious! Spider and Jeanne are among the few "celebrities" I'd actually like to meet. :)

 

(And now you've made me not only want to go dig up my copy of "Stardance", but my old PC game "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon". )

Link to comment

*grin* It's the SH sound in the name that they have trouble with - because there is no h in it! But they're getting it. Gradually. :laughing: I know the V is a problem, if you think of it as a Welsh name, but I'd rather have Sioneva then Sionefa! :)

 

Heh. As far as people trying to pronounce it, yeah, that spelling's definitely easier. My sister -the one who now lives in Wales- used to have a a dog named Dafydd, Dafi for short, but we gave the vet his name as Davi to make things easier. :) (You probably know this, but in mercy to others reading the tangent - it's the Welsh version of David, pronounced Dah-veeth.)

Although I'd've thought most people at least know how to pronounce "Sean", so I wouldn't have thought "Sion" would be THAT much of a leap.... especially if they ever heard of Sinead O'Connor.

Link to comment

mine are signed copies. :) Those two are a hoot!

 

I'm envious! Spider and Jeanne are among the few "celebrities" I'd actually like to meet. :)

 

(And now you've made me not only want to go dig up my copy of "Stardance", but my old PC game "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon". )

I had the honor of being there when Spider was singing - twice. Once, in a bar, he was doing an old Beetle's tune and everyone was singing along with Paul's solo, then with John's, then with George's solo, everyone shut up. It was dead quiet. Then when he got to Ringo's solo, everyone sang again. Afterwards, he asked the crowd "why?" and the punster of the group, Frank Skinner, said "well, everyone wants to be a Starr." :laughing: This was at a closed coffee club. Jeanne and I had a long convo. She explained to me that it didn't matter if the Stardance series was being combined into one book, just so long as it stayed in print.

Then I heard him sing again. And later that same convention, I watched him get the "frank skinner memorial elrond" just after Frank got the "spider robinson memorial elron." I also was able to take a lesson in meditation 101 by Jeanne.

 

One of Spider's pun books was a misprint. The person setting the type changed one word on the first page so that the pun doesn't work. It passed editing. It was the typesetter that fubared it. So anytime he sees a copy of that book, he corrects the mistake.

Link to comment

Our name comes from our camper van SAGEFOX. The sage refers to the weed, not the wisdom. Anyone who has read blabberon's accounts of our spring desert trips certainly understands that there is little wisdom along on those journeys.

 

SAGEFOX is a Subaru powered Vanagon that has been with us for 17 years and 160,000 miles through 9 western states.

 

2ba3638a-c344-4407-be1b-44c4327b7b96.jpg

Link to comment

I just used my email address name. Had I known at the time I would have chosen something more interesting.

 

Brian is just my first name, and Snat is lifelong nickname which is a shortened version of my last name, which is long and Polish.

 

Which reminds me of a joke.

 

What does a Polish girl get on her wedding night that is long and hard?

 

A new last name.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...