DeepThought

Internet Nicknames – what’s in a name?

Using nicknames on the Internet is an interesting phenomenon that prompts all kinds of questions: who uses a nickname? Why is a particular nickname chosen? and how? Using a nickname often prompts others to suppose that the user wishes to be anonymous. According to Danet (1996) choosing an Internet nickname achieves two different goals:

- To hide the real identity
- To draw attention to the virtual identity

However, my own research suggests that Danet's explanation is no longer appropriate. Internet nicknames are highly personal and are often used all over the internet. Think about it: according to google 'Denise Carter' generates at least 4,860,000 hits (yes I am number one!). Yet my internet nickname 'dutypigeon' generates only 23 (and I am numbers 1-22!). by following these 'dutypigeon' links it is possible to identify me as Denise Carter. I am more traceable through my Internet nickname than through my formal given name.

Nicknames, being chosen rather than given by parents are often thought to reflect a person's identity better than the formal name. Yet, is this true of Internet nicknames? My own nickname, 'dutypigeon' was deliberately chosen to reflect neither age, sex, nor gender (this was a result of my early reading around the Internet and identity, particularly Turkle and Stone). It was also part of an old family joke in that when answering the telephone we would often say things like: 'Trafalgar Square, dutypigeon speaking', or, 'War department, do you want to fight?'.

Choosing an internet nickname is more serious a task than one might realise, and the names chosen tend to fall into various categories, fourteen of which were identified by Bechar-Israeli (1995). Asking other people why they chose their Internet nickname has revealed some strange reasons, especially when newbies are trying to logon to a new website and often have to think of a name really quickly (I know of one person who could only think of their dog's name!). the important thing to remember as a cyberethnographer is that anonymity does not mean an absence of identity, and so nicknames still need changing to protect my respndants. Indeed, trying to decide what to change weird and wonderful nicknames to, when writing up my research was a more difficult task than I had envisaged!

Meeting one of my virtual community members face-to-face caused much merriment among my family when I was addressed as dutypigeon. Thinking about it later, it was really no different from being called mum by my son or Denise by my beloved. After all - I inhabit many cages.

UPDATE 27/05/06
I have recently put a sitemeter on my blog and have been extremely interested to learn that this is the most popular comment - and is generally arrived at after using a search engine with the term 'Internet Nicknames'. I have often thought about writing a paper on Internet nicknames as I have a lot of data from my research, if anyone is interested and would love to discuss it please leave a comment.

posted by Denise Carter @ 7:45 AM