A couple of years ago... Actually five years ago, if I'm counting correctly, I joined Flickr. Before that time I had been known as Mermeli in various circles, amongst them IRC. It's derived from my name, Mervi, and the Finnish word for marmot (murmeli). I was kind of done with it and needed a change. Around this time I found out some teen girl was also using the same nickname online and I decided to dump it.
As I needed a screen name for Flickr I begun a search for one. My second name is Emilia, a name I'm pretty fond of. I've been told that when I was a baby I had been called as Emilia rather than Mervi for a while. I don't think I remember that, but I've always liked that more than my first name. Part of the reason must be because everyone has always been mixing my first name with my sisters' names. They are rather similar. It's not easy to be the little sister, you see. Shadowed by the ones who came before you. Now I got sidetracked.
Umm... So where was I? Oh, right. Because I know my first name doesn't mean much anything I started to wonder if the second one would have some (cool) meaning. And so I found out Emilia is the genus of these flowers, which are commonly known as tasselflowers or tassel flowers. That sounded cool enough. Granted it's a mouthful, but so what.
During the next year and then some I joined COLOURlovers, MySpace (yeah, that one) and then some and decided to use this same pseudonym, tasselflower, on them. Summer of 2008 I created my first and main Twitter account as tasselflower. I still wasn't quite attached to the name.
After all these years of going back and forth if I should keep on being a funny looking flower I was finally ready to finally own it. I decided to change this blog's name from Tomato Branch to tasselflower and stopped for thinking about alternate Twitter handles. Sure, it could be shorter, I just don't follow the rules.
I rather like it. It's girly. It's fun. It's different. It has a meaning and something to do with me, or at least with my real name. I can deal with it. I can be tasselflower.
Suomeksi (In Finnish):
Viitisen vuotta sitten aloin etsiä uutta nimimerkkiä, jota voisin käyttää Flickr-kuvapalvelussa. Vanha IRC-nikkini, Mermeli, tuntui tällöin elähtäneeltä ja löysin netistä jonkun teinitytön, joka esiintyi samalla nimellä. Koska ensimmäinen nimeni, Mervi, ei tarkoita paljon mitään päätin tsekata olisiko toisella nimelläni, Emilia, jokin tarkoitus. Löysin kukkia, joiden suku on Emilia. Kukkia, joita kutsutaan myös nimellä tasselflower tai tassel flower, tupsukukka. Se kuulosti ihan hyvältä. Seuraavina vuosina otin saman nimen käyttööni useammassa eri paikassa, muun muassa kesällä 2008 Twitterissä. Kaikkien näiden vuosien jälkeen taannoin päätin vihdoin omistaa nimen tasselflower. Se on tyttömäinen, hauska, se tarkoittaa oikeaa kukkaa ja sillä on jotain tekemistä minun, tai ainakin nimeni kanssa. Voin olla tasselflower.
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3 replies for "How did I become tasselflower?"
Tassie! :-)
I'm planning to write down something like this. :-)
Yay! I take that as a promise. :)
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