Melville Cooke

None of us choose the names we are first and almost indelibly known by. We can, like middleweight boxer Marvellous Marvin Hagler, legally add a name before the given first name that we believe sums up our abilities, or like heavyweight Muhammed Ali don a new name that signifies a change in our outlook.

But, even then, it is sometimes necessary to insist that the new name be used, which is just what Ali did as he battered Floyd Patterson in 1965 and Ernie Terrell in 1967, both of whom insisted on calling him Cassius Clay. He did not insist, actually; he beat it into them as he demanded "What's my name?"

Entertainers Identity

Entertainers tend not to change their given names, but naturally become much more known by the stage names they adopt and which certainly have much more ring than the one on the birth certificate. Jepther McLymot just does not sound like a name a MC should be announcing at a concert, while Luciano has that indefinable 'suppen' to it. Engelbert Humperdinck has mystery as well as a certain elegance that Arnold George Dorsey just does not possess and Gerry Dorsey, the first name he sang under, could not hope to acquire. (He reportedly hated his real name and really, it does not sound like someone who sang Please Release Me, Wild Thing and I Can't Help Myself. Neither does it sound like someone born in India.)

The technological age has not only handed many of us the means of instantaneous communication, but it has also provided our first chance for a fresh start at a name. Not a change, where we will have to contend with persons who scoff at our new names and insist on calling us by the old ones, not a hyphenated statement of having snagged a man, even in this age of short men (pun intended) or even insistence on keeping the unmarried surname, something which does irk many a person.

The email address is the perfect clean slate for us to choose a name that reflects us, not as we are in the mirror or how people see us, but how we see ourselves. There is absolutely no one who can tell us that the name is inappropriate or wrong and, best of all, we automatically transfer that self-concept every time we send an email (even if the other person deletes it. We don't know anyway, so it does not affect the sense of power and self-definition that we get from simply choosing our own name.

And since we can have as many email addresses as we wish, heck, we can choose so many different personae, or sides of our multifaceted one. Ironically enough, the given name is often, if not the first choice, then the first attempt. Then off into the fantasies we go.

So we have really racy names (and these exist, so I won't give the name of the email provider) such as bigphatfish and dominateu on the female side. And the male ones that proclaim prowess in that sole department where prowess is really important are numerous, going from studed to any number of inches (which, somehow, are never under eight. Talk about wishes).

Then there are the gems as well as the names that state a particular relationship; mamasboy, do woman among them.

What is amazing is that often the email names suggest a picture that is so different from what we perceive of the creator and owner of the name if and when we actually see them. So a 'hottie' whatever almost invariably leaves the eye cold; a 'hammerman' looks like he cannot 'mash ants' and a 'bimmer7' drives a deportee station wagon.

Still, in a world where we often have very little real control over our lives, an email address is at least something that we can define ourselves through. And if that gives some sense of satisfaction to their creators, so let it be.

By their email names we shall know them.

Melville Cooke is a freelance writer