My real name is fairly unusual, and so I tend to be reluctant to make use of it online. It used to be the case that the only web search-engine hits for my name referred to me. More recently a couple of other namesakes have appeared to help obscure things a little, but they make only scanty figleaves for my own internet indiscretions.
An ego-search in Google for the most commonly used version of my name returns "About 573 results". The first is a heavily fictionalized discography from my own website: a cautionary tale in believing all you read on the net (many a new acquaintance has plugged me into Google and come away thinking I have had a reasonably lengthy recording career. It's all fibs!). The second hit is also from my website, albeit this time in a more factual context. My surname being a first name in parts of Europe, most of the hits are lists of people or correspondences. Indeed there are only two more genuine cases of my name occurring in the rest of the first page results: hit seven is me, being mentioned in a newspaper interview regarding my involvement in a television quiz show, while hit four is a separate individual in Idaho.
A more formal rendering of my name is a tiny bit more alarming: the first result (of 680) leads to a harvesting of the Electoral roll, indicating that I am the only person with my name eligible to vote in the UK, and promising further juicy details to those who might want them. Hit nine is the fake discography again, and two of the links on the first page of results fall foul of the name list trap. Another is a French typo. The rest are all people with my name who are not me. They don't let on an awful lot about their lives, though.
An extended form of my name has yet to hit Google, and there is no sign of my full name either. SaintEvelin conjures up a cacophony of tweets but little more of relevance.
For exactly one year I went by a different first name. If one plugs that form of my name into Google, one gets a whopping 875 returns. Of those on the first page, half are dead people (from genealogy sites). Two are from dating sites, and are not me, one is another name list confusion and one is a Facebook page, again for someone who is not me. Surprisingly, however, hit eight is me. It's a link to mp3s of a radio show I used to present at the back end of the '90s.
It's little details like this that make me avoid using my real name online. Instead I have amassed over the years a lengthy catalogue of identities. I shall not list them all here, but they vary by mood and application, and a small sample appeared in my last post. They protect me from undue attention in certain fields (something I learnt at an early stage when a friend searched for my email address and found it attached to a newsgroup posting I'd rather they'd not have seen).
Before setting up this blog and its associated Twitter account, I had three primary on-line presences, with sundry lesser ones (many long forgotten!). The oldest is my website (which contains within it a small community of 'me's under various pseudonyms). A year and a half ago I was persuaded to join Facebook to facilitate socializing with my librarianship coursemates. I reluctantly used my real name for this at first, but soon repunctuated it as a French pun, and from the start I ensured that all the gun emplacements and barbed wire I could muster were surrounding my account.
Then there was Twitter. My Twitter name (not SaintEvelin, the other one) is a pun, garnered from the OED entry for "twitter". It rather suggested its own personality, but that regal demeanour was a little at odds with librarianship, which is why I took the decision to create my 'spin-off' account and develop a new on-line identity specifically for my library activities. NPC 2011 taught me that developing such an identity would be a very sensible move, and so here it is.
Why, then, SaintEvelin? Let me enumerate the ways:
i) I have been considering trying to develop the name "stevelin" as a day-to-day moniker: a fanciful romantic portmanteau of Steve and Rivelin that one may abbreviate in either a masculine or feminine direction according to ones tastes. Throw in a couple of shift keys and one gets StEvelin.
ii) StEvelin (along with StEve and SaintEve) was already taken as an identity on Twitter. SaintEvelin was not.
iii) SaintEvelin follows the same structural form (high title + predominantly but not exclusively female forename) as my pre-existing account: KingConstance.
iv) The "Evelin" element of the name ties in neatly with another online alter-ego: the anagrammatic editor of my website: Eve Gabriella Harper-St.James.
v) The "Saint" element indicates a degree of whimsy on my part; "Evelin" purposefully suggests that I am a woman: a suggestion I encourage in spite of what may be considered anatomical evidence to the contrary.
One might question my decision to foster an effectively female online identity when in person I have a beard. But I have a beard because it grows quickly and persistent shaving damages my chin. And for that matter, I'm quite fond of my beard and my ability to grow it. In real life, chromosomes and hormones have dealt me a hand that I cannot turn in, however much I might wish to twist. I represent that hand with as convincing a poker-face as I feel I can get away with, both in person and online. It just happens to be that online you can't see me, so I can get away with that little bit more without your picking up a 'tell'.
I'm not naïve. I realise that this disconnect between my online self and my physical appearance may cause some confusion along the way. I hope it won't be an insurmountable level of confusion. It is my intention to be in this career for the rest of my working life, so I want to go into it honestly and comfortably, with people aware that I take a rather loose approach to the concept of gender. If it helps to pigeon-hole me one way or another then by all means feel free to do so, although I may occasionally be found nesting on the opposite perch.
This duality does lend a few complications of nomenclature. Online, I formally use "stevelin" or "StEvelin" and informally "Evelin". If you meet me in real life I will happily answer to Evelin (this online persona), Steve (the shortened version of the name that personnel will have on their records), Stevelin (somewhere between the two, a bit like me I suppose), or anything else you think might politely attract my attention! I don't really have a preference; most people know me as Steve and I'm fine with that. I guess that when applying for jobs I shall be using that, given that it's my real name and all. It makes the paperwork easier. But I will be far from insulted (indeed I would be flattered) were I to be referred to in the feminine, even if my appearance appears not to warrant it. I fully intend to accommodate the 'feminine' aspect of myself in my library career and calling myself Evelin might conceivably be seen as an element of that. I hope it isn't seen as an obstacle. I don't seek to be wilfully weird; just to reflect the person I am.
As already mentioned, I created the SaintEvelin account with the deliberate intention of it being largely dedicated to matters library, allowing my other account to continue in its silliness without being encumbered by conversations with peers on the likes of CPD! But at the same time I am keen to inject an element of the personal into my tweets in order to appear a human being rather than an OPAC. I was unsure how the two accounts would balance out, but I am finding that my old account tends to address history and politics with sneering jokes, while SaintEvelin allows me a more open vent for my thoughts and pleasures: the SaintEvelin is much more an honest stream, while Constance is more interested in over-constructed jokes. If you like, Constance is the sneers to Evelin's succentorship. For a more rounded view of myself and my personality, I suggest you follow both accounts.
Keen to underline this more functional aspect of the SaintEvelin account as a vessel for myself in my new career, I decided I should depict myself in my avatar. It's effectively a stained glass reworking of the Constance image, with an androgynous portrait of me in place of Constance Collier; stained glass because I'm a Saint, androgynous to reflect the gender ambiguities considered above (my beard is absent and the photograph shows me in a more 'feminine' light than usually illuminates me, but it is me nonetheless).
As for the general design of my blog and Twitter profile, I have stuck with the mediævalism established under the rule of Constance, with the purple and pink of the palette informed by the stained glass of the avatar. A rather gruesome Fraktur font stands in for a more genuine script in the blog titles. The fabulous floor is to be found at Bolsover Castle. All seem to fit the conceit of SaintEvelin. As a saint, I see her in a priory or similar, hence "succentorship": a deputy role in a monastic choir incorporating responsibilities to the order's library (occupying the role of a junior librarian in effect). It's an obscure reference, but it seems to fit.
What, then, does all this say about me? Well my ego-searches wilfully mislead, but not in a detrimental way. As for things SaintEvelin, I don't know... these are early days. I'd be grateful for your own thoughts on the matter, if you have any. What do you feel my blog (and Twitter feed) says about me? Please feel free to drop me a comment and let me know.
Thanks,
Evelin.x
Evelin.x
hi, nice to see another medieval blog on cpd23 :)
ReplyDelete