Pseudonym

For my Scottish Lit. class, we're going to have a blog. Since this blog will be out in the public realm, that means the comments of people from my class (and the corresponding undergrad class) will be visible for whoever wanders along. This is fuzzy ground, thanks to the university's policies about student privacy.

Ergo, Margaret has told us that we will all be using pseudonyms to do our postings. Cool, huh?

Of course, this creates a huge pile of possibilities. Should I pick a name which represents some homage to a favorite writer? Should I plug in the name of a character from something I've written? Should I use some kind of name pulled from my family? Should my name reflect my course of study for the class and come from a folk song? Or, given the subject of the class, should I pull my name from a Scottish book, or from folklore? So much to choose from, I just don't know. I get the chance here to call myself anything I want. Fun and intimidating at the same time.

"Come on," you say, "It's just a pen name for a class, it's hardly a major decision."

Yeah, I know. But the writer in me loves names. I love finding just the right name for a character, and if I'm going to be a character, I ought to have just the right name too. Oughtn't I?

I guess the real question here is: if I were fictional, what would my author name me?

How about you? If you were in a book, what would your name be? No, your given name doesn't count.