Look, it’s a Thursday in the first week of a three week international break. Tottenham Hotspur’s mens team has the week off and are away either playing with their national teams or… whatever it is that club footballers do when they’re not training. Spurs Women don’t play again until Sunday morning. It’s a slow day. There’s not much news.
So how about a community prompt instead? This is a large community, and many of you have been around a LONG time. And all of you had to choose a username/handle when
you signed up to comment on Cartilage Free Captain. So let’s dig into that.
What is the origin or explanation of your chosen username?
I post under my real name now, but when I was a mere commenter-American and even for a few years after I first joined the masthead as a writer, I posted under the name “MennoDaddy.” Old heads here still call me Menno, and newer posters sometimes wonder why.
Here’s why: I’m Mennonite by birth. Mennonites are a religious denomination that originated with Dutch Catholic priest Menno Simons, who left the church to join with the burgeoning (but then persecuted) Anabaptism movement; his followers later created the Mennonites. My dad was born Amish and my grandparents left the Amish church when Dad was a baby, so I can say I am the son of an Amishman.
I discovered Cartilage Free Captain in 2010 when my youngest child was two years old. At the time I was scratching my writer’s itch with what was then super popular — a parenting blog on BlogSpot called MennoDaddy. Seemed like a good username at the time, and it eventually stuck. I dropped the moniker (and the dad blog) a long time ago now, but that’s the origin of the name.
What about you? What’s the origin of your username or handle? Have you changed it? From what, and when? Put it in the comments and let’s chat.
