Names and naming

I'd like to thank everyone for very useful input to our last post on psuedonyms.

I like Caroline's idea of quasi-anonymity by virtue of using first names only. Problem is, our son's first name alone is not going to be terribly anonymous if combined with any other demographic information (middle name, geographic area), or even our names. That's all doubly true if combined in a sibset with other names that we like: imagine a search for "J----- AND Wilhelmina* AND Ferdinand**" for example.

Not that this is a huge problem now, but babies grow up to be teenagers who would probably be very embarrassed to have any personal information shared, much less personal information that involves poop and pee and the like.

We've been hosting images on other sites where the URLs can be reset very easily so that the public access is cut off. Also, image search technology based on, say, facial recognition algorithms, is lagging a bit behind word searches, so I think we're unlikely to be very bothered by it now.

So, I think some pseudonyms would be useful.

Mine is easy: I could be Genevieve, which is a version of my name with the same beginning sound, or Guinevere, the older form that is particularly harmonious with my penchant for fusty medieval names. Lastly, if I wanted to keep the initial, Jane (which is the traditional source of my nickname).

My lovely spouse's name is a bit harder. I think she could be Ephiny, which is a truncated form of her own name, and also has a bonus of being a lovely in-joke in that it's a character I loved on the TV show that brought us together.

But, our son's name is more challenging to decide.

We could do the obvious: Julian. Nicely anonymous, certainly close enough - a lot of people in our acquaintance actually still say Julian, and I'm pretty sure each set of grandparents made verbal mix-ups in early days to this effect at least once. There was even one memorable typo in an email exchange that went along the lines of "Lovely photos of Julian!" followed by a prompt response of something along the lines of "Which Julian?!" But I think now all grandparents have got it straight enough that we could confidently use the pseudonym. But, still, I don't actually LIKE the name, and I don't think we really want to encourage confusion on the matter.

We could do the nickname of Jo(e), which is nice and normal and also very anonymous. Even though we're not using it right now, it's technically correct. Ditto or Jo(e)l.

Lastly, we could do Jolly, because it IS actually an (occasional) nickname, based on his real name, and it's an adjective so it's unlikely to trigger search algorithms. And I'm not sure many people would work backwards from Jolly to the real name, because we could well have chosen it for reasons of disposition alone.

*Nope, not an actual name contender, though accurate popularity profile.
**No resemblance to actual future sibset guaranteed. :)