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What’s In a Name?

My Gamertag: Pixie Jo. I seriously don’t know whether to hate it or not. I think I hate it… but then sometimes I think it’s awesome. I’m not sure if I am just bored of it. Maybe I’ve outgrown it a little. After all it was created by an 18 year old who was going through a fad of loving pixies. I sometimes feel that although it’s an acceptable name for a teenager, it isn’t really fitting for a 24 year old mother who’s actually gone off pixies a bit. My Gamertag, from time to time, has created a few uncomfortable online experiences, too. On one occasion, I joined a random party of strangers, who commented that they didn’t want to play with a little girl and promptly left. Another time, I was in a lobby with a bunch of people plotting to chase me around with a knife. And they did, even the ones on my own team. Such nice people.

When it comes to changing my name, two things instantly stop me in my tracks. The first is, I have a space in my name, without an underscore. Any name I choose now is going to have an underscore if it’s more than one word! All the good names with actual spaces are sure to be gone. The second is… well pretty much the same as the first only with numbers. I don’t want numbers in my tag. When I look at my name after considering those points, I encounter a rare time where I think that my Gamertag is awesome because it has no numbers and it has real spaces. Anyway I probably couldn’t think of a better one because I’m no good at naming things. I named my first and only hamster Flit for goodness sake. I mean really… what kind of name is that?

To what, exactly?
An argument I’ve heard over and over again, regarding female gamers, is why make your tag so… girly? This is aimed at females who complain about getting crude messages, friend requests, and other unwanted attention from other gamers, soley because they are women. The obvious solution is to create a tag that pretty much makes everyone think you’re just another male gamer and then they’ll leave you alone. I guess this works, but while I’m not going to be shouting ‘I’m female! Look at me!’ down the mic every five seconds, I’m not about to disguise myself, either. At the end of the day, I really should be able to have the fluffiest, girliest gamertag ever known to mankind and be able to play without others assuming I’m instantly going to be crap because I am a woman.
'Damn, they figured me out'
'Damn, they figured me out'
So to keep the gamertag or not? To pay 800 Microsoft points to change something that has been a part of me for years, or to keep it, and endure the ‘pics or you’re not real’ messages? I like to think that most people choose their Gamertag/PSN ID based on something that means something to them. Whether it’s an ode to their favourite game, or something completely non-game related, like a school nickname. My opinion may change next week, but I guess I’ll keep it for now. At least until I can think of something super badass… that isn’t taken. Yeah, I might be holding on to it a while.

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Joanne

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2 responses to “What’s In a Name?”

  1. Zoey avatar
    Zoey

    My tag (destinee ehgc) is very personal to me and I love it. The destinee bit is a nickname from so long ago I can’t even remember, and I’ve always used it in games. The ehgc bit was given to me by an ex-boyfriend who used to refer to me as that when talking to his mates. It stands for… extremely hot gamer chick! There’s no way I’ll ever change my name 🙂

  2. Leon avatar
    Leon

    I changed my gamertag – used to be RoadToDawn, and now it’s “Leon Belmont X”. I grew bored of mine, and chose it as I was going through a bit of a Kingdom Hearts phase and loved one of the quotes (though no-one knew what I was quoting anyway).

    Leon is a name I’ve been using for ages, and the Belmont clan are big favourites of mine from Castlevania. However, the problem I had is that the combination (Leon Belmont) is an actual name of one of the Belmonts, so was obviously taken. Hence the random X…

    Anyway, I’m glad I changed my Gamertag, as I feel my new one “fits” me better, and the X does sort of round it off nicely without looking obviously out of place.

    So basically, if you can think of a tag you prefer, I’d personally say go with it. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that all your friends aren’t automatically informed of the update, and won’t know who this new name is on their friends list – so make sure to send out a mass message to update people of the name change!

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