Jun 11 2008
What’s in a (User)Name?
Let’s talk about a tech topic today. Since you’re (most likely) reading this on the internet, you’re probably familiar with online names. These are also called screen names, user names, logins, handle, account name, and probably some others I haven’t thought of. It’s basically the name one creates for their online persona(s).
Often it’s easiest to put some portion of your name, a nickname, or perhaps a combination including your birth year. We’ll use a nickname one of my personal online friends gave me a good 12 years ago now: Lozza. So I could be Lozza, LozzaB, Lozza76, LozzaGirl, etc. None of those are particularly scandalous.
But have you ever checked what names your teen is going by in their online adventures? I’m not just talking about the email address you know of—what about their MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, or AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) names?
There are no hard and fast rules about this type of thing. If your teen has a nickname or an inside joke or code for something, you may not ever know if their name is one that means something “bad”. But there are some fairly obvious ones that I will mention.
Adding 69 anywhere is not good. It’s got blatant sexual overtones, enough said. Similarly, adding 420 anywhere is a no-go. Marijuana is rumored to be made up of 420 chemicals, so is sometimes used as a nickname for the drug.
Back to sexual references: generally, anything with a derivative of hot, wet, kitty, hard, something ending in “4u”, etc. are all being sexually suggestive and need to be deleted ASAP.
Another one I noticed many years ago, but not sure if it’s still around, was names preceded or ended by SS. Like Secret Society. I dug around and questioned folks with these names and found out, indeed, it wasn’t a society I wanted to belong to. So be careful with that one.
Just make a point of finding out your teen’s online names and nicknames. Remind them about the fact that stuff that gets on the internet tends to stay on the internet. Forever. And colleges and employers google names and look up people on MySpace, Facebook, etc. to see what their personal internet history looks like. Don’t let a silly name come between your teen and their future.
2 Responses to “What’s in a (User)Name?”
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Good post. I’m going to pass it along to my sister. I don’t have any children but I do have nieces and a nephew and you can never be too careful!
www.singleinla.today.com
Great post. I have not thought about the 420 for years. I know many people used that as a way to communicate with others who smoked. It was a secret code until someone finally figured it out.