Link to original post: [drupal=1492]The Life and Times of Jam Stunna, Part 1: What's in a Name?[/drupal]
This is the first in a series of infrequent blogs where you can get to know your favorite moderator, me! I admit that initially I was turned off to blogging because of it's narcissistic nature, but hey, it's fun. I'm a writer anyway, so I doubt it's any less narcissistic to ask people to read my fiction than it is to ask them to read my non-fiction. Enough babble though, on to the show!
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We're all given names at birth, and I believe that a person's name says alot about them, even though they have no control over it. It can be interesting to look at what a person's name means, how they use it in their lives, and other names and nicknames that they pick up throughout the years. So let's start from the beginning:
Jamil Rashad Ragland.
That is my government name in full. But what does it mean? A quick search on Parenthood.com reveals that Jamil means "Handsome", and Rashad means "Thinker; counselor". Trying to determine the genealogy of my last name would be a full-time job, so I'll skip that for now.
So how did I come about such a name? Well, my father was flirting with the Nation of Islam in the 80's, and was in a pseudo-Muslim phase when I was born. My brothers also have Arabic names.
The first nickname I can remember is being called "Meel", or just the second syllable of my first name. This was something that my parents called me, and my first babysitter, although she altered it to "Opi-Meel" (I don't know why). Almost no one outside of my family calls me that nickname, and even though they do it less now that I'm an adult, both my mother and father will call me by that childhood name every once in a while.
Fast-forward to elementary school. Where I went to school, there was a set of triplets, and one of them was named RJ. Man, I thought that was the coolest nickname EVER at that age. My initials were JR, and I would have given anything to have my name changed so that I could have them read as RJ. JR was such a common name, and that was the only RJ I'd ever heard of (and I haven't met one since, actually). Of course, my name didn't change.
I didn't have any nicknames in middle school for the most part, everyone just called me Jamil. It wasn't until 8th grade that I got my first nickname from my friends, and that was "Chipmunk". It sucked though, because the nickname stems from the fact that I was literally the shortest male in my class. Even worse, I once broke up a fight in school, and for a few weeks I was known as "Super Chipmunk".
After that (and after I grew a few inches), the nicknames started rolling. Some people simply called me by my last name. That came about because I was in JROTC in high school, and my AI called me by my last name. Another animal-inspired nickname was Squirrel, because I was once seen playing with acorns during summer camp. That nickname didn't last past that one-week summer camp though. "Meel" was still around, but as with middle school, I was usually just Jamil to most people.
Joining the OverClocked ReMix community gave me my first opportunity to actually choose my nickname, or handle as we call it. Initially, I chose the handle "Rags". It's something of a tradition in my family; since it's a somewhat uncommon name, both my grandfather and father were both known as Rags at some point in their lives (my grandfather is still called Rags by his friends). I think I used that handle for a few months on that site, but I was a lurker back then and never posted under it I think.
It was my brother that gave me the handle that I go by today. He just called me "Jam Stunna" as a joke one day, and the name stuck. When I joined SWF, I left Rags behind and signed up as Jam Stunna. I liked the name so much that I even abandoned Rags on OCR and made a new account using Jam Stunna. Ever since, I've entered every tournament as Jam Stunna. I've used a couple of other names for other websites (for example, I go by Non-Sequitur on the GamesAreFun boards in addition to a few other joke accounts), but when I want to be serious, I go as Jam Stunna.
Now, I'm actually called Jam by most of my friends. Even my boss calls me Jam, which I think is pretty funny. All of my friends from before I started playing Smash still call me Jamil, but just about everyone else abbreviates my first name.
When I found out that I was going to be a father, a part of me wanted to continue my father's tradition of Arabic names. I wanted a girl, and I'd already picked out a name: Tahira, which means "pure". However, my wife had other plans. She wanted a boy, didn't like the name Tahira (apparently it resembles the word for scissors in Spanish), and she was pretty uninterested in naming any of her children Arabic names. She's half-Palestinian, and is pretty sick of all of the Arab stuff.
She won on all three fronts. We ended up having a boy, and ended up choosing the name Gabriel. Initially, his middle name was going to be James, in honor of my grandfather, but later my wife said that she really wanted something different. So in the end, my son's name ended up being Gabriel Jamil Ragland. A new tradition has begun, or so we shall see.
One life, many names. All of us here get to choose how we're known on the internet, but I'm sure there are many other names for you. They all represent a different part of us, as different names are used by different people. But they all come together to form us as a whole, and it really is amazing to take a step back and see how our names truly show others who we are, maybe in spite of the fact that we don't choose them.
This is the first in a series of infrequent blogs where you can get to know your favorite moderator, me! I admit that initially I was turned off to blogging because of it's narcissistic nature, but hey, it's fun. I'm a writer anyway, so I doubt it's any less narcissistic to ask people to read my fiction than it is to ask them to read my non-fiction. Enough babble though, on to the show!
---------------------------------------
We're all given names at birth, and I believe that a person's name says alot about them, even though they have no control over it. It can be interesting to look at what a person's name means, how they use it in their lives, and other names and nicknames that they pick up throughout the years. So let's start from the beginning:
Jamil Rashad Ragland.
That is my government name in full. But what does it mean? A quick search on Parenthood.com reveals that Jamil means "Handsome", and Rashad means "Thinker; counselor". Trying to determine the genealogy of my last name would be a full-time job, so I'll skip that for now.
So how did I come about such a name? Well, my father was flirting with the Nation of Islam in the 80's, and was in a pseudo-Muslim phase when I was born. My brothers also have Arabic names.
The first nickname I can remember is being called "Meel", or just the second syllable of my first name. This was something that my parents called me, and my first babysitter, although she altered it to "Opi-Meel" (I don't know why). Almost no one outside of my family calls me that nickname, and even though they do it less now that I'm an adult, both my mother and father will call me by that childhood name every once in a while.
Fast-forward to elementary school. Where I went to school, there was a set of triplets, and one of them was named RJ. Man, I thought that was the coolest nickname EVER at that age. My initials were JR, and I would have given anything to have my name changed so that I could have them read as RJ. JR was such a common name, and that was the only RJ I'd ever heard of (and I haven't met one since, actually). Of course, my name didn't change.
I didn't have any nicknames in middle school for the most part, everyone just called me Jamil. It wasn't until 8th grade that I got my first nickname from my friends, and that was "Chipmunk". It sucked though, because the nickname stems from the fact that I was literally the shortest male in my class. Even worse, I once broke up a fight in school, and for a few weeks I was known as "Super Chipmunk".
After that (and after I grew a few inches), the nicknames started rolling. Some people simply called me by my last name. That came about because I was in JROTC in high school, and my AI called me by my last name. Another animal-inspired nickname was Squirrel, because I was once seen playing with acorns during summer camp. That nickname didn't last past that one-week summer camp though. "Meel" was still around, but as with middle school, I was usually just Jamil to most people.
Joining the OverClocked ReMix community gave me my first opportunity to actually choose my nickname, or handle as we call it. Initially, I chose the handle "Rags". It's something of a tradition in my family; since it's a somewhat uncommon name, both my grandfather and father were both known as Rags at some point in their lives (my grandfather is still called Rags by his friends). I think I used that handle for a few months on that site, but I was a lurker back then and never posted under it I think.
It was my brother that gave me the handle that I go by today. He just called me "Jam Stunna" as a joke one day, and the name stuck. When I joined SWF, I left Rags behind and signed up as Jam Stunna. I liked the name so much that I even abandoned Rags on OCR and made a new account using Jam Stunna. Ever since, I've entered every tournament as Jam Stunna. I've used a couple of other names for other websites (for example, I go by Non-Sequitur on the GamesAreFun boards in addition to a few other joke accounts), but when I want to be serious, I go as Jam Stunna.
Now, I'm actually called Jam by most of my friends. Even my boss calls me Jam, which I think is pretty funny. All of my friends from before I started playing Smash still call me Jamil, but just about everyone else abbreviates my first name.
When I found out that I was going to be a father, a part of me wanted to continue my father's tradition of Arabic names. I wanted a girl, and I'd already picked out a name: Tahira, which means "pure". However, my wife had other plans. She wanted a boy, didn't like the name Tahira (apparently it resembles the word for scissors in Spanish), and she was pretty uninterested in naming any of her children Arabic names. She's half-Palestinian, and is pretty sick of all of the Arab stuff.
She won on all three fronts. We ended up having a boy, and ended up choosing the name Gabriel. Initially, his middle name was going to be James, in honor of my grandfather, but later my wife said that she really wanted something different. So in the end, my son's name ended up being Gabriel Jamil Ragland. A new tradition has begun, or so we shall see.
One life, many names. All of us here get to choose how we're known on the internet, but I'm sure there are many other names for you. They all represent a different part of us, as different names are used by different people. But they all come together to form us as a whole, and it really is amazing to take a step back and see how our names truly show others who we are, maybe in spite of the fact that we don't choose them.
