Thursday 26 February 2015

Noms de blog

You've heard of noms de plume and, possibly, noms de guerre, but has it occurred to you that many of us, especially bloggers, use pseudonyms?  I always think of these as noms de blog, or maybe it should be noms d'Internet.  I post under the name Brighton Pensioner although many people are well aware that my name is really Brian Slater.  That nom de blog came about courtesy of another Englishman, if a Lancastrian can be so called.  He called himself the Oldham Pirate for a reason I never did discover and, in one of those old message boards, he once referred to me as "that pensioner from Brighton".  From then on I was, of course, the Brighton Pensioner.

My better half is usually referred to as the Old Bat.  Some might think me rude in using that soubriquet but I assure you that it was she who used it first.  Many bloggers use initials as noms de blog and I amuse myself by trying to decode them.  Yes, I know: little things please little minds and all that.

The first is one I don't need to decode as I know very well that HO is Him Outdoors.  This is a reverse reference to Her Indoors, the wife of  Arthur Daley, a less-than-honest businessman in the television series Minder.

DD is a female (I think) and I always translate those initials as Daffy Duck.

Talking of ducks (a very cryptic reference), Skip mentions the PHG.  Particularly hairy goat, perhaps?  Or perfectly horrible ghost?

And what about SD?  Could this be semi-detached?  (Is he only half there?)  Or maybe it's slimy dipstick?

And on that note I think I had better go and hide!

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Haha, I often do that BP and I wondered about BHG (although I didn't come up with big hairy goat ...) - I shall reveal all ...

SD is for Surfer Dude (I probably used to say it in full and then got lazy) and it's because SD looks like he's just stepped off a beach in California with his long blond hair and all round tan :-)

OldAFSarge said...

Hahaha! Really excellent, I too use a nom de blog but so many people have figured out who I really am (some knew me in a previous life, so to speak) that I don't mind much being referred to by my real name.

Great story of how you received (what some would call) your "call sign."