A Rose by Any Other Name

  by  NatalieMaynor 

Did anyone ever wonder why this blog is called "Philosophidian"? Or why the title is "Insert Something Pithy Here"? No?

Well, I'm going to tell you anyway.

I have a blog on LiveJournal that I've had since 2003. Sometimes, over there, I would come up with a blog topic that was too serious. I try to be either ranty or entertaining (or entertainingly ranty) over there. I wanted a place where I could write at length about longer, more serious topics. Posts I would have to work on for a while. Essays, as opposed to quick posts.

But it needed a name.

Now, I'm into puns. And I'm into Kaa (the snake from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling). I've been 'Kaa' or 'KaaSerpent' online since the early 90s. If you see a user 'kaa' or 'kaaserpent' on an online forum, there's a good chance it's me.

This was before the days when Google and Facebook and other sites were absolutely hell-bent on associating everyone's real names with everything they ever do online. I wasn't necessarily trying to hide, but I didn't necessarily want everyone I knew (or are related to, or work with) to know I had this blog, either. So I didn't pick my name or a variation thereof.

For the same reason, I also didn't necessarily want this one connected to the LiveJournal one. I was afraid that people used to seeing me be entertaining (at least to myself) might be annoyed or completely uninterested in seeing me be serious. Especially since I espouse a philosophy on life that is contrary to a good number of my friends and all of my family. i.e., that whole 'Atheist' thing. It makes some people touchy, for whatever reason, like they expect me to start chanting in Latin backwards or something. I can be pretty plain-spoken about the topic, here, whereas in my other online blogging homes, I am less in-your-face about it.

So my pun-loving mind starts to percolate names involving 'philosophy' and 'Kaa.' Nothing comes to mind. Until one day I was looking at a list of synonyms for both words and it hit me.

A snake is an ophidian. The presence of 'oph' in both 'philosopher' and 'ophidian' hit me, and thus was born 'Philosophidian.' Philosophical snake.

And I literally could not come up with anything for the title of the blog. I toyed with a lot of things, and finally, just to put something in the space, I typed 'Insert Something Pithy Here,' and it has remained that from day 1.

You'd be surprised at how many people use exactly that or something very close. Or at least I was. I thought I was being sooooo original. So funny. Laugh's on me. :)

If you want to see how my other two blogs got their names, you can click here (LiveJournal) or here (Wordpress).

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This post is in response to The Writer's Post Blog Hop 2014 #4 prompt, Explain the Name of Your Blog. The host is Suzy Que. Other entries are linked from her blog post.