Day of the Lindens

You might say I have a thing for names. Probably he’s obsessed, you’d think. You’d be right, too. I believe finding the right name is a true art that takes time and effort to get right. Don’t ask me to pick domain name, because I’ll worry about it for days. I’ve written about SL names more than once, and as they are some of the most popular articles I’ve written, I’d say I’m not the only one who has an interest in names.

This week I had some fun with names on Plurk. The SLPlurkosphere, if I can call it that, now numbers well over a thousand and is beyond counting at this point. My first idea was to ask SLPlurkers for new SL Last Names. As you know, the average resident must select their last name from the list that is active when they sign up. However, the names are often rather goofy and we always think we’d make up better ones ourselves. The SLPlurkers had some truly great ideas:

Alter
Art
Artist
Badassmutherfukkah   
Blingtard   
Cadaver
Chinnery
Clapton
Dotcom
Evil
Fashion
Fleshwound
Forbrains
Goatshagger
Hairyarse   
Head
Hendrix
Hooch
Jalopy
Lincoln
Lonestar
Lunchmeat
Muttley
Nose
Obama   
Painter
Peen
Pigbert
Pinhead
Player
Probe
Pucker
Pumper
Punk
Quark   
Smartypants
Smedley
Smells   
TheGreat!
Toes   
Tujiro
Undertow   
Vibe
Warpdrive
Werbert

Haha! As I read through these, all kinds of wonderful first/last name combinations come to mind, especially for “Head”, “Nose” and “Evil”. Which ones do you like? Some, like “Obama” or “Hendrix” probably should have been there a long time ago. Was “Bush” ever an active name?

I believe a few of these were active in the past. But many have never been active, and it would be terrific to use some of them instead of the all-too-frequent nonsensical, unspellable and unpronounceable names we see in recent months. If any Lindens are listening, perhaps they could use a few of these?

And speaking of Lindens, one of the Last Name suggestions was in fact, “Linden”. Haley and I were discussing these names when it hit me: Plurk allows users to change their handle to anything – and anything includes “Linden”! So, at 2AM we decided to launch “Be a Linden Day” on Plurk. I changed my name to “Armi Linden” and Haley became “Queen of Linden”. I plurked the event, and waited. I was not disappointed.

By morning the meme had spread to practically everyone, although a few believed it would reflect poorly on themselves to be one of those accursed Lindens, even for a day of fantasy. A few others wanted to be rebels and deliberately stood aside (e.g. “Resident Moggs”). Many newly minted Lindens exercised their new God-like powers by restarting the grid, handing out Linden dollars and performing all manner of crazy acts. Even though a few didn’t choose to participate, it’s pretty clear we’re going to do this again sometime.

Many chose to be a Lindenized variation on their avatar name, but others created the most imaginative Linden names. Here are only a few of them, and it’s easy to guess to whom some of them belong:

AFK Linden
Ali Linden
B Linden
Balp Linden
Balt Linden
Bells Linden
Botgirl Linden
Cali Linden
CaS La'Linden
Codie Linden
Coke Linden
Dami Linden
DandeLinden   
dandeLinden
Erotic Linden
IsleBe Linden
IsNotA Linden
Laleeta Linden
Loaf Linden
Luna Linden
M Linden
Mew Linden
NotALinden
Penguin Linden
Plastic Linden
Promisc Linden
Tuna Linden
Tym Linden
Wanna Linden

I’m sorry, but there were many, many more, and I just can’t remember them. Perhaps you can add yours in the comments?

My personal favorite? It had to be dandeLinden. Just say it aloud and you’ll agree with me.