Name Origins

[Glenwit]

Hello NarniaWeb,

I apologize if this was in another thread somewhere, I did not notice it.

Anyways, I thought it would be cool to discuss usernames - and what inspired them. Is there a specific meaning behind it/Narnia reference of some kind/anything? Or it could just be totally random.

I guess I'll start. If I was a non-human Narnian creature, I'd want to be a centaur. So I literally went to a centaur name-generator and Glenwit was the result (incidentally, it's also a portmanteau of 'Glenstorm' and 'Roonwit' - two of the most prominent Narnian Centaurs in the novels).

[johobbit]

Hi, Glenwit, 'tis a great idea for a topic! I know we had a similar one ages (as in years) ago, but it's probably long-locked or buried deep in the history of the Spare Oom.

I do like your combination username of those two Narnian Centaurs!

I am a huge Narnia fan, but also a huge Middle-earth fan, and since I adore hobbits and my first name is Jo-Anna, I combined those. Also, ever since I was young, I loved the Peanuts comic strip, wherein Snoopy sometimes referred to himself as Joe Cool, so my username is also kind of a takeoff on that.

[coracle]

Hi Glenwit. My username goes back to another C.S.Lewis site and forum I belonged from the late 90s, where we just used our own names, and made some great online friendships (some of whom I still know today).

I had been cautious about chat rooms, but when the owner of the site started a chat room for the forum, my friends persuaded me to join in, and I had to come up with a chatname.

A group of members had already written some shared stories on the forum (not entirely RP) and in one of them we each selected an animal character to represent ourselves. I had used a mouse character, partly because I had played a mouse onstage; thinking of Reepicheep I decided that 'coracle' was a good 'vehicle' for a mouse. I have used this name in several places on the internet ever since, but nowhere as much as here.

[stargazer]

Fun idea for a thread! I remember enjoying the stories in the original one johobbit mentions.

My screen name refers to my favorite and longest-running hobby, amateur astronomy. This was the first online forum I actually signed up for (as opposed to lurking) and so the name is not terribly original, but it is descriptive.

[King_Erlian]

King Erlian is of course the father of King Tirian, whom Tirian meets at the end of The Last Battle when he and the Friends of Narnia enter the Real Narnia. On the "Introduce Yourself" thread on NarniaWeb, the first question is "King or Queen? (male or female)", and I liked the idea of being a Narnian king. But I didn't identify as much with most of the Narnian kings in the books (Peter, Edmund, Caspian, Rilian, Tirian) because they're all quite young and I'm middle-aged. I know Erlian is described in The Last Battle as "young and merry", but so are Digory and Polly in the New Narnia. He had been middle-aged, and that's good enough for me. The other contenders were King Frank, but I couldn't see myself as a Cockney cab-driver, and King Lune, which I did consider but decided I wasn't quite portly enough.

[Cleander]

Great idea Glenwit!
(I actually guessed that Roonwit and Glenstorm had something to do with your username. )
Cleander (not my real name) is actually an ancient Greek name (pronounced similarly to Alexander). It was the name of a character in an old Stephen Boyd movie I like called The Fall of the Roman Empire. In the movie, Cleander is a creepy blind court sage to the Roman Emperor, whom he treacherously assassinates.
In history, he was a captain of the Praetorian guard who fell out of favor with and was executed by the emperor Commodus.(That's right, the villain from Gladiator.)
I've used Cleander on a ton of different sites I'm on, not to mention a character in one of the books I have in progress, so I just seem to have a weird obsession with the name!

[Courtenay]

Very interesting to hear where everyone gets their names from — thanks for starting/reviving this topic, Glenwit!

Mine, however, is totally uninventive... Courtenay is actually my real given name. I have occasionally used different names for other forums, but in a Narnia forum I figure I have nothing to hide and I don't mind people knowing my real name. Besides, it's an unusual enough name (especially with the old-fashioned spelling — though it's pronounced the same as the more common version, "Courtney") that it sounds good in an online forum without me having to rack my brains to think up something more exotic!!

[narnia fan 7]

My username is what happens when you literally only put about 10 seconds of thought into what to call yourself. I originally came up with the name "narnia fan 7" back when I first started visiting Narniaweb. I wanted to leave a comment on some news story and obviously a username is required so I just thought "We'll I'm a Narnia fan, and theres 7 books" and just when with it. Then when I joined the forum I just stuck with the name since I was already using it.

If I'm being honest I kind of regret going with this name. I wish I'd come up with something that was an actual name instead of a generic numerical designation. But it is what it is and I guess I'm stuck with it. lol

[daughter of the King]

My name is actually a combo of quotes from books I've read.

In Narnia, girls are referred to as "daughters of Eve"

In The Two Towers, Eowyn is described as "a daughter of kings"

And in The Princess and the Goblin the book opens with a conversation of how every little girl is a princess, and a princess is defined as "the daughter of a king"

So I just smooshed all that together. It's a little long for casual conversation, so eventually it got shortened to dotk, and then Dot.

[Wunderkind_Lucy]

I'm glad you revived this topic, Glenwit! I remember enjoying the old thread, and it's always interesting to find out how everyone came up with their usernames!

It's probably easy enough to guess the story behind my name. Wunderkind comes from the credits song in LWW, and Lucy is one of my favorite characters in the Chronicles of Narnia.

I wanted to use Wunderkind_Princess (I've used this for my email address and other stuff) here; but, alas, it was too long. My other choice was girloff8th, a username I had previously used, but I wanted a Narnian-themed name.

~Wunder

[Reepicheep775]

Before my family had a computer, my earliest experiences on the internet were booking the library computer for an hour and playing games. My very first online persona was from my account on the Lego website. I decided to call myself DrPepper - just because it sounded cool... and I liked to drink Dr. Pepper, I guess. Anyway, that username was apparently being used by 774 other people, so I was assigned the name DrPepper775.

A couple years later, I discovered Narnia and, shortly after that, I discovered NarniaWeb. Coming up with a name was a no brainer. Of course, I would call myself Reepicheep. He was my favourite Narnia character and probably my favourite character in general. Like with DrPepper, the name Reepicheep was already taken, but instead of calling myself Reepicheep3, or whatever the next available number was, I decided to honour my old Lego screen name and call myself Reepicheep775.

[shastastwin]

When I joined NarniaWeb, I knew I wanted something Narnian for my screen name. The Horse and His Boy is my favorite Chronicle, and Shasta my favorite character from the book. At the time, it had been a while since I had read the book again, and I couldn't remember Shasta's given name (Cor) but I could remember that he was a twin! So I came up with shastastwin (which is ironic, since I am far more like Shasta than I am like Corin). The name has stuck, with lots of nicknames and variations over the years, including ST, stwin, Saint (playing off "st") and Schwinn.

[Glenwit]

Wow - this took off!

Thanks for all of your replies so far. We are truly a diverse group and our names definitely reflect that.

[Meltintalle]

I chose Meltintalle as a screen name because I needed one right as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were coming out and I wanted to be an elf. So I hunted for an elvish baby name site and eventually came out with something that means 'Lover of the Starkindler' in Quenyan.

When I joined NarniaWeb, I still wanted to be an elf, and it was easy to remember.

[Arwenel]

It's hard to remember my exact head-space from 13 (!) years ago, but that was around the time i was learning ... not to speak/read Elvish, exactly, but what certain components of Elvish meant, and how to combine them into names. At a guess, i took "Arwen", not as a reference to the character but as my best effort to translate my name into Elvish, then added "el" -- either for the meaning, or to differentiate myself from members like Lady Arwen. I'm not sure.

"Ar" means high, "wen" means maiden, and "el" means stars, so "high lady of the stars", which isn't bad. I don't use Arwenel anywhere else, but i do use a lot of cobbled-together Elvish syllables. Morfinwen most frequently (dark-haired maiden), but also Arindilwen and Armerilwen (lady of lilies and lady of roses respectively).

[SnowAngel]

Fun thread. I'm not really into the elvish names, but Meltintalle and Arwenel are super cool.

I joined NarniaWeb as a teen and I couldn't come up with a Narnia inspired name that wasn't already taken, so I picked SnowAngel for several reasons. I love snow/winter, it's the title of book I enjoyed reading about that time, it's unique, and I thought it sounded cool.

SnowAngel