This is an interesting description of me from my name that I found at the Kabalarian Philosophy homepage.
The name of [QYV] makes you dynamic, restless, independent, ready to accept challenges, and outspoken. You enjoy change, travel, and new experiences. Reacting against injustice, you go out of your way to assist in creating fairness. You are very creative and promotional, and work intensely to carry out your plans. Though you have limitless enthusiasm for new ventures, you lose interest quickly once things become routine, as you dislike being forced to attend to detail and do monotonous work. Your lack of patience and consistency in your affairs and your tendency to act impulsively can lead to actions you later regret taking, or to accidents, particularly to the head. You find that you often do the hard, pioneering work in an undertaking, only to see others reap the benefits. While this name makes you very honest and sincere in your personal relationships, your tendency to retaliate with caustic remarks over even slight offenses could spoil many friendships.
You are prone to suffer moods of depression, and physical and mental tension which could have a serious affect upon the nervous system, causing stomach ulcers. Health weaknesses could also affect the eyes, ears, sinuses, or result in loss of hair.
Throughout my lifetime, I've been called by a variety of names and monikers. Some of them were memorable, while others quickly faded into obscurity. Listed below are just a few of the ones I remember from my childhood..
- Sherwood or Brandon
- There were three options that my dad gave to my mom for names for me before I was born. I do not think I would have wanted to be called Sherwood.
- 司徒浩瀚 (Sītú Hàohàn)
- This is my Chinese name in traditional and Hanyu Pinyin.
- 司徒 (shito)
- Apparently the Japanese meaning of 司徒 is pretty much the same as the Chinese one and the pronounciation is very similar: Minister of Civil Administration and Social Welfare (Zhou-dynasty China)
- Jie-jie (Ah jie)
- This is probably the first name that I'd remember since it means "son" in Chinese. Cantonese actually. There are some stories associated with this name.. but I'll pass on relating them. I'm sure they'll all surface at my wedding, but I can wait until then.
- Gaw-gaw (Gaw)
- Only one person calls me by this name regularly and that would be girl. It means "big brother" in Cantonese. This hasn't worn off yet, so some people have tried making fun of it by calling me by that name. *shrug* No problems here!
- Jennifer/Jenny
- No introduction needed, people have called me Jennifer or Jenny for as long as I know. It doesn't happen that often, and it didn't really bother me that much. It was more common when I was a kid, but people tend to stop picking on you when you get older (especially if you don't react the way they expect you to) so I don't really hear those names any more.
- James
- Back when I was still in elementary school, I remember wandering around the school one day looking for something to do. I bumped into a few younger kids playing handball or foot hockey and I wanted to join in. They couldn't really catch my name, so one of the kids told me
"We'll just call you James."
I've never seen those kids since.
- Ace
- I used this handle from grade six (1987) until I came to university (1993) when I switched to QYV. It was in grade six where I hung with a bunch of guys who wanted to put together a group.. I'll leave out the details. I chose my name to be Assassin, but over time, as I realized that I couldn't spell worth crap, I wanted something a bit shorter and easier to recall. Unfortunately, I couldn't use a short for of Assassin since I didn't want to be called an Ass, so I chose something close: Ace. I only used this name when playing games where I could choose the name of my character, or putting my initials on video games. BJ called me by that handle a few times, although I haven't talked to him.. man it's been several years.
- Since I didn't use this handle much when communicating with people, it wasn't well known by others. So when I switch handles, it didn't affect me much. Although Axcee was such an interesting spawn..
- Guinevere/Gwen
- I was called this during high school by a certain DeeL. He found out sometime in grade nine (1990) that Guinevere was an old version of the name Jennifer. He used it sporadically, but it never really caught on, and died a quiet death after high school. That's probably a good thing, since I really didn't like the name that much.
- Jen
- This is actually a "proper" contraction of my name, and a couple people (like Stonaday) have used this a few times. The earliest recorded incident being my grade ten yearbook sometime in 1991. I used to use it on occasion when signing my e-mail but stopped since QYV is my de facto name on the net.
- Jacques
- This name was, shall we say, "forced" upon me in Grade 11 French back in 1991. Our teacher wanted to give each of us a French name by which we would call ourselves during the class. When she asked me what name I wanted, I blanked. I had no idea what good French names were out there. After a minute or two, a little HKL at the back of the room said:
"Let's call him Jacques!"
Unfortunately for me, the class agreed, and I was branded a Jacques since then.
- Only two people (who picked on me a fair bit in high school) still call me Jacques these days. I don't see either of them much anymore, which is too bad, since they were fun to be with (in hindsight).
- QYV
- I came across this word when I was reading through Piers Anthony's "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series in the summer of 1992. I was quite impressed with the way the story was told. Anyway, I also liked the name he used for the secret organization: QYV. It was different and original, so I decided to adopt that as my new handle, seeing as Ace was just a tad too common. I have used QYV ever since, even though it was more common than I had anticipated. Oh well.
- A number of people have asked me how QYV was pronounced.
"They spell KIFE", [Helse] said. "Hard Q, vowel Y, hard
V.."
Helse explains it all in the first book: Refugee.
- Jenkins
- I've been called this by a few people, most notably by this girl I worked with while I was selling fireworks sometime in 1995. She probably didn't hear me the first time I told her my name and I didn't bother correcting her. She felt kind of embarrassed when she DID discover my real name, but this went on for quite some time..
- Goober
- This started innocently enough. During my last year (1996-1997) as an undergrad at the University of Waterloo, I worked down the hall from Squishy (who I had a crush on at that time). Anyway, I tended to be wandering around during the day, and she tended to visit me when I was out. After a number of frustrating attempts to find me, she left a note calling me a goober for not being around. Since she usually called someone who annoyed her a weenie, I felt kind of special. I decided to use Goober whenever I communicated with her from that point on (especially if she wasn't in when I was visiting =).
- Jig Set
- During the summer after I had finished my B.Sc. (in 1997) I hung around the university as a summer student so that I could finish up on my fourth year project. I was hanging around Cat at that time and she always made fun of my signature because it was so illegible. Actually, there were a few letters that could be picked out and she used them to leave a note on my computer.
- J.Y.
- While I was working at the University of Waterloo, my supervisor started calling me by my first initials. This started sometime in 1997 soon after I graduated with my B.Sc. One day my supervisor entered my office and mentioned that I should choose which name I should use to author my papers. Some people with middle names are inconsistent when authoring papers, sometimes using their full name, using initials, or even dropping it altogether. This makes it a little difficult when tracking down that person's work, so having a consistent name is beneficial. I decided to use my middle initial since it tends to show up on my official documents. Afterwards, he started calling me by my initials.
- Sir Eat-A-Lot
- During my stint as a graduate student, I spent a fair bit of time with a few other M.Sc. candidates in my department. These included weirDo, Dusty, and RHS. We would go out to lunch every day, and Dusty eventually started calling me Sir Eat-A-Lot due to my apparent appetite.
- Butler
- Not much to say here. Riston used this to label my name on his broomball list as everyone else on the list had some sort of descriptive name. I don't know how descriptive "Butler" is, but it's apparently a play of words using my name, although Graduate explains:
"'Butler' because '[QYV]' is a typical butler's name in movies and plays. 'Jeeves' is another common one,.."
This was later backed up by Riston. I'll agree with the Jeeves, but I don't think I've ever heard [QYV] being used as a butler's name (plural or otherwise).
- Ing
- During my trip to Victoria for the World Broomball Championship, some of my teammates didn't catch my name (or I mumbled it a little too incoherently) so when I told Holly what my name was during our first party (after she asked of course), she looked surprised and said,
"I've been calling you 'Benning' all this
time!"
To which I replied,
"That's fine, I only hear the 'Ing' anyway."
So from then on, she started calling me Ing. Being the de facto leader of this motley crew, everyone else followed suit. They even came up with variations, like Jenner, Ling, Jens, and Inger. However, it is "Ing" that stuck for the rest of the trip.
- Jenny
- This all started when I joined the Canadian Ski Patrol. When my name tag was made, they had incorrectly entered my name as "Jenny". Later on, LR (my patrol leader that year) found the mistake, and changed the name before they made the tags. Unfortunately, she changed it to "Lenning" and that's what was printed on the name tag. Great. I didn't hear about it until we were going through a list of names (to make sure the names were correct) and KM saw my name and told me the entire story. Fortunately, they were able to print out a corrected name tag when I finally got my jacket.
- A few members of the patrol found the entire incident very entertaining and they been calling me "Jenny" since then. Oh hurrah.
- Gumby
- Pokey wanted to give me a moniker when she realized that she kept calling me in plural form. It wasn't like I was making fun of her or anything, but she still wanted to call me something else. LY, who was in the car, suggested the handle that Squishy gave me. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't remember what it was. After a few minutes of thinking, all he could come up with was "Gumby". Pokey jumped all over that idea and started calling me Gumby from then on.
- In retaliation, I decided to start calling her Pokey.
- Matt
- I have been mistaken as Matt a couple of times for various reasons. Once was by some girl who checked out my website and thought my name was Matt because I was using Matt's scripts for my guestbook and counter. The other time was when LH called me Matt. Why she started calling me by that name is anyone's guess. I had thought that it was originally DWC's fault, but she wouldn't tell me..
- Shrimp Stealer
- VLT started calling me by this moniker after one of our badminton Christmas dinners. MJ had brought a platter of frozen shrimp and I quickly devoured a handful of them as they were being thawed. VLT witnessed the event and told me to stop stealing the shrimp, and I told her,
"I'm just borrowing the shrimp, you can have them
back if you want them."
She took offense to that and has called me Shrimp Stealer since then. Being the most outgoing of the bunch, she's gotten the other kids to call me by that name too.
- Loser Box
- This was another name that I wasn't going to put in here but TN keeps on using it so I might as well add it. During one of our many badminton games, she started making fun of me, calling me a "Loser Box". If I made a good shot, she would drop a letter from the first word. So after a good shot, I'd go to "Lose Box", the "Lo Box", etc. However, my good shots were few and far between, and by bad shots would add more letters to the name. So I spent most of my time as a "Loser Box".
- Yenning
- While I was in Europe, I was keeping in touch with MJNL. We had a number of discussions about the Scandinavian languages and she was telling me that if I was Scandinavian, my name would be pronounced "Yenning". We laughed about that, and she started calling me that since then.
- (The) Stomach
- This was a nick name I picked up from the folks on the Markham Motorcycle group. Apparently enough people saw how much I ate at our irregular lunch/dinner gatherings and came up with this notion that I was some sort of bottomless pit. Whatever!
- This goes along with the Moniker that Dusty gave to me during grad school: Sir Eat-a-lot.
- Professor
- During one of the reorganizations of the office layout, we had the idea of putting my desk at one end of a long cubicle for our coders. However, since the walls were not put up for a few months, my desk was bascially floating in the middle of an open space, facing the rest of the desks. As such, EK started calling me "Professor". In protest, I started calling him "Doctor".
