What's in a name?
Apparently a lot.
I've use a number of Alias Names over the years, especially online. This is an explaination of my current one...
"bud"... it's a Southern Thing
I first signed up to the NNM Community as "bud" (the lowercase spelling is a nod to e.e. cummings, though I cannot boast to be an ardent fan, I just like the quirk... plus it is symmetrical). I often use the moniker "Bud Isitt" now because I am not 100% "out" at this time. (Does "Poly" count as "Queer"?)
What's in a name? Funny you should ask. ... So in one phase of my relatively Gypsy (transient) style of life (around 1988) I was living in Nashville, TN. I grew up and have lived most of my life in the "South", but "Guitar Town" is steeped far more in "Southern Culture" than my hometown of New Orleans, LA. I often joked back then that I had to move North to go further "South".
"Bud" is a very generic form to address someone (typically a male) in the South. It is often drawn out, as in: "How you doin' buuuuud?" "Bubba" is also fairly common, especially in central TN. The 1st time I got called "Bubba" in a public setting I almost fell-out (from both [suppressed] laughter & amazement). I was in a hardware store on West End Ave., near Centennial Park, a relatively affluent part of town (near the Vanderbilt University campus). "Can I help you Bubba?" ("OMG! Please! Yes!" was my thought response, after the initial shock.)
Anyway... about that same time, one of my neighbors (a fairly colorful character, we lived a block up a side street from that hardware store) introduced his house to me as a "Bubba Dude" house. My 1st encounter with that term (half Bubba [redneck, not that there's anything wrong with that], half Dude [cool/hip]). I immediately became enamored with the term, and began using it often. I even had a "Bubba Dude" domain name registered at one point.
So one day I got the idea (sometime after viewing the film "O' Brother, Where Art Thou?") that if I added a "U" to Bubba Dude (initials), you got "BUD". Thus was 'born' "Bubba Ulysses Dude", which has endured for quite a while as one of my alias ID's.
Rolling back a bit again... Why: "Bud Isitt"? ... I was watching a British Sit-Com (Coupling, 2000) one day and noticed that a cast member had the last name "Isitt". Really? Sweet! I had once seen a "News of the Weird" post where somebody legally changed their name to "Mr. Coke Is It". So naturally I thought, "Why can't I be 'Mr. Bud Is It'?"
This story would not be complete without this last nugget (to further understand how my brain works). Again, Nashville, mid 80's... a local free weekly rag posted a contest to complete the sentence: "You're so Nashville if...". A friend of my sister got an honorable mention for: "... Your first name is your Grandfather's middle name, your middle name is your Grandmother's maiden name, and everybody calls you Bud." (I cannot express enough how true that really is.) I think the winner was: "... you travel to the next county to buy alcohol, and run into a Decon from your church entering as you exit the Liquor Store." (Which was also comically true at the time, and no doubt is still true to some degree.) :-o
So there it is... What's in a name? Apparently a lot.
IRL (where I live) most folks call me Conrad. And I now am not quite as concerned about being "Outed" (though I am still a bit cautious)... so in order to possibly reduce confusion after I relaxed my stance (post signing up with the NNM Community around July-2021), the alias there has now evolved to: "bud" Conrad (with, I suspect, Conrad being identified by most folks as a last name, which is fine).
Thanks for stopping by. That's my "Name" story, and I'm sticking to it. (BTW: I now live in SW-Oregon, and the valley I currently reside in is an appropriate mix of Bubba & Dude culture! Ain't life grand?)
;-)
Be Well... Have Fun!
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