I have mentioned somewhere along the way that I came up with my gaming handle, also now my nom de blog, Wilhelm Arcturus, was back in 1986 when playing Stellar Emperor on GEnie.
In short, I picked Wilhelm and then, because I flew with a group that went by the name The Arcturan Empire (AE!), I tacked on the last name d’Arcturus, which I later simplified to just Arcturus.
Emperor of the Galaxy – 1987
I revived the name when I made my first, and still main, character in EVE Online and eventually adopted it here on the blog after being Wilhelm2451 for a while. (2451 was my player ID number in Stellar Emperor.)
I have pondered the name over the years, wondering if it was a wise choice. It doesn’t flow well, it isn’t particularly easy to say, and people who say it aloud often try to imbue it with an overwrought German pronunciation. While I have occasionally used Wilhelm IV in games, I am not trying to be the Kaiser.
On the upside, it is fairly unique. You don’t find a lot of others trying to pass off that name. If you Google it, you get me and one of the brothers Grimm, due to Arcturus Books publishing some of their works.
It is one of those things, like the name of this blog, that I think could have been better, but which I am pretty much committed to at this point. I am unlikely to come up with a better name that would make the effort of changing worthwhile.
And then Jeff Edwards threw out a line for me that made the name useful for a moment.
Jeff Edwards was the author lined up for the ill-fate Fountain War book Kickstarter back in 2015. I am pretty sure I started following him on Twitter back then and have carried on since. This past week he tweeted something to which I had to respond.
The setup and reply
You can go your whole life, or at least 35 years, waiting for a setup like that.
And he seemed to appreciate the humor.
The reply
So that’s it, I guess I am now fully committed to the name now that it has delivered on the humor front.
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