Username Meme
May. 17th, 2006 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgan_dhuI've been tagged by goodlookinout. The meme is:
Explain your LiveJournal name and its meaning. When you're done, tag as many people as there are letters in your name.
Well, I'll do the explaining but not the tagging, although there are a goodly number of folks with usernames that I am curious about. Just my style, man. (Obscure Neil Young reference.)
Why the name Morgan Dhu? Lot of levels there. To begin with, Morgan is my chosen use name in real life as well. It was one of the names my mother considered as a middle name for me, along with Bronwen and a few other Celtic names. She didn't put any middle name on my birth certificate, but I did know the names she considered and ultimately chose Morgan, because it sounded like who I wanted to be, and hoped I was. My first name, which not many people know, is not and has never been me, and hasn't been used outside of official documentary purposes in about 25 years.
So, I am Morgan, everywhere I go. And yes, my ethnic background is, as far as anyone knows, Welsh, Scots, maybe a hint of Irish and nothing else. I am a Celt, Gael and Cymraig.
Dhu is a variation on the Gaelic word dubh, which means dark and foreboding, mysterious, secret or hidden; it can also mean evil, but I'm not using it in that sense.
In Gaelic culture (as in many others), people are given nicknames based on physical or personality characteristics. So Morgan Dhu is one way of saying Morgan the Black (I have hair that is so dark brown as to be indistinguishable from black except under a strong light), or Morgan the Mysterious (and there's a part of me that likes sounding mysterious, even if I'm not really).
More layers of meaning. There is a book that I love, possibly more than any other book, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners. Its central character is Morag Gunn, who is a Celt born and raised in Canada, who is given at one point the nickname of Morag Dhu. I have always in many ways identified with the character of Morag Gunn.
Still more layers of meaning. I used to do a lot of RPGing back in the days when it was mostly D&D and people used to sit around a kitchen table and figure out their character's attributes on a sheet of paper. One of my most successful and longest-running characters (through many linked campaigns until she grew so powerful I had to retire her) was a chaotic good warrior-cleric named Morgan Dhu.
So when I went onto the net, I wanted a name that was not exactly my real, in daily life name, but was nonetheless a name that was me, and not a persona, because I have chosen not to adopt a net persona that differs from my self in any way other than the absence of physicality. And on mailing lists, in Usenet, in Live Journal, and anywhere else I may have gone or may go in the future, I am either Morgan Dhu or my own full Highlander name.
goodlookinout. The meme is:Explain your LiveJournal name and its meaning. When you're done, tag as many people as there are letters in your name.
Well, I'll do the explaining but not the tagging, although there are a goodly number of folks with usernames that I am curious about. Just my style, man. (Obscure Neil Young reference.)
Why the name Morgan Dhu? Lot of levels there. To begin with, Morgan is my chosen use name in real life as well. It was one of the names my mother considered as a middle name for me, along with Bronwen and a few other Celtic names. She didn't put any middle name on my birth certificate, but I did know the names she considered and ultimately chose Morgan, because it sounded like who I wanted to be, and hoped I was. My first name, which not many people know, is not and has never been me, and hasn't been used outside of official documentary purposes in about 25 years.
So, I am Morgan, everywhere I go. And yes, my ethnic background is, as far as anyone knows, Welsh, Scots, maybe a hint of Irish and nothing else. I am a Celt, Gael and Cymraig.
Dhu is a variation on the Gaelic word dubh, which means dark and foreboding, mysterious, secret or hidden; it can also mean evil, but I'm not using it in that sense.
In Gaelic culture (as in many others), people are given nicknames based on physical or personality characteristics. So Morgan Dhu is one way of saying Morgan the Black (I have hair that is so dark brown as to be indistinguishable from black except under a strong light), or Morgan the Mysterious (and there's a part of me that likes sounding mysterious, even if I'm not really).
More layers of meaning. There is a book that I love, possibly more than any other book, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners. Its central character is Morag Gunn, who is a Celt born and raised in Canada, who is given at one point the nickname of Morag Dhu. I have always in many ways identified with the character of Morag Gunn.
Still more layers of meaning. I used to do a lot of RPGing back in the days when it was mostly D&D and people used to sit around a kitchen table and figure out their character's attributes on a sheet of paper. One of my most successful and longest-running characters (through many linked campaigns until she grew so powerful I had to retire her) was a chaotic good warrior-cleric named Morgan Dhu.
So when I went onto the net, I wanted a name that was not exactly my real, in daily life name, but was nonetheless a name that was me, and not a persona, because I have chosen not to adopt a net persona that differs from my self in any way other than the absence of physicality. And on mailing lists, in Usenet, in Live Journal, and anywhere else I may have gone or may go in the future, I am either Morgan Dhu or my own full Highlander name.
