Inadequate Naming

I need a new name.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I like the name of the blog, Endgame Viable. But I don’t like using UltrViolet as my personal identity.

It’s weird, because I am UltrViolet. Ever since I was in the Crayola Clan back in NetQuake days. Ah, good ol’ ]CC[-UltrViolet.

But in this age of cross-media brand recognition and whatnot, it’s a terrible name. There’s no ‘a’ in my UltrViolet, which is vitally important to the name. There’s a reason there’s no ‘a’ which goes all the way back to Quake in 1996. (Reason: “]CC[-UltraViolet” was one character too long to fit in the 15-character limit.)

But when I’m streaming, it’s really awkward to say UltrViolet without an ‘a’ in it. I say “ULTER-violet” instead of “ULTRA-violet” to emphasize the difference. I’m quite sure nobody gets that, and people just think I have a weird accent or a speech impediment or possibly a brain defect.

The other major problem with UltrViolet is that someone already has @ultrviolet on Twitter. I mean, what the crap. Who else in the entire world would have any reason to spell “ultraviolet” without an ‘a’? (That person on Twitter is not me, in case you’re wondering.)

A third major problem with UltrViolet is that some years ago a major motion picture came out with a girl character named Ultraviolet. So now half the world probably thinks that UltrViolet is a girl’s name, when in fact it’s a crayon’s name.

What to do. Before I was UltrViolet, I was Salamander, but I see a lot of Salamanders out there in the gaming world and it’s just too common. And I don’t even need to look on Twitter to know that someone already has @salamander. Pretty sure someone wrote a bot to claim every dictionary word on Twitter soon after it went public.

Why not just call myself “Endgame Viable?” Well, to me, it’s a brand name, so to speak. It’s not my name. It’s the name of the web site. I feel pretty dumb using @endgameviable for “personal” stuff on Twitter. I feel like it should be reserved for announcements and information about the site itself.

Of course it’s even more dumb to change my Twitter handle now that I’ve built up a handful of followers for @endgameviable. If I come up with a new one I’ll be throwing away all of those followers.

On the other hand, there aren’t that many followers so now would be the best time to change. Better than when I have a million followers, for example, because that’s totally going to happen.

You might be wondering why I would care about separating my gamer identity from the brand name of the blog. Well, obviously I’m going to rocket to success and become super famous any day now. When that happens I will need to sell the blog to a major media company for millions of dollars. But I would want to retain my personal gamer identity so that I can use my star power on whatever my next project will be.

That sounds realistic, right?