ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

Our esteemed Cluechick is on the road for a few weeks, so she asked me, Sapiophile, to fill the gap here with a couple entries of my own.

The biggest difference between Cluechick and me: she's much nicer and more forgiving than me. So don your asbestos suits, and gear up for today's topic: names.

"What's in a name?" Juliet asked. Her conclusion: "It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man." But she's wrong; in the world of the Internet, one's name is one's face. So just as you would not (we hope) show up to a first date with jelly smudged around your mouth, don't wear a stupid name in public. This applies to both handles you select on dating sites, and on chosen email names.

Before I suggest how to pick a good one, let's take a look at some categories of real life bad examples:

Boring: Paul14, NYCguy, mikey1963, SirMark --
this is the best category of bad names. These aren't going to hurt you, but they make you forgettable, which is a bad thing when you are trying to stand out in that hot woman's inevitable flood of responses. (Here's a clue: if the system you pick a name on tells you that yourname, yourname1, yourname2, and yourname342 are taken, that's a hint that it isn't very original.)

Cliche: lonelyguy, looking4luv, BBWluvr22, curiousmale66 -- okay, these may have the advantage of saying more about you than "Joe493" does, but they leave your target chick yawning from your lack of creativity. At least they aren't as bad as...

Stupid: BigCock4U, cum4me, SirHardOne, HornyPig, 9InchesOfLove, hotbod3 -- you might as well hold up a sign that says "I'm a big doofus" as wear one of these names. These names are remarkably popular with the guys and yet...I've yet to find a single woman who finds them appealing, or even funny (beyond a "Haha, what a doofus!") So if you had been considering using "wellhungguy", just quit now, okay?

The very best names are those that are original, say something about who you are, and ideally provide another starting point for conversation. You can't have too many ice breakers.

I just did a quick look around some of the systems I'm on and found some names that appeal to me (or at least fail to turn me off):
- stradivarius (the name of a famous line of violins) - suggests to me education and an artistic bent, maybe a musician
- honeydewmelon - made me chuckle and makes me wonder if he's sweet
- xreipar - no idea what this means, but it looks like it has a story behind it, and I'd ask him in our first email exchange
- TatooedDude - kind of lame but the rhyming is cute and at least it tells me something about him
- cocopocoloco - making me laugh is a good start
- ChaosTheory72 - the name is original enough that I'm guessing '72' is his birth year, not how many guys chose "chaostheory" before him. I could be wrong though.
- LemonDaddy - is that the opposite of a sugar daddy?
- trifecta - this one would have been even better if he's been looking for a foursome

Try to find a name that will be amusing, informative, intriguing or all three. Or at very least, try to avoid being tagged a dork by labelling yourself "StudMuffin22".

Tomorrow's Sapiophile's Cluechick Gap-filling topic: why grammar matters