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About the beginning of the Internet, when there were only Bulletin Board Systems, I was seeking a handle that somewhat described me. At the time I was a publisher, editor, and a writer. My last name is one of the most common in the USA, so I decided to use a pun based on my work and my last name and input "Wordsmith." Alas, it was already taken by a guy who never posted or visited the BBS, but I was NOT going to be some numbered version of that.

So I noodled on the problem for a while. I thought that a words can be sharper than swords. . . and since I had actually made swords when I had been in college working as a prop master for the drama department (I had to produce 40 swords that suitably clanged when struck together, looked good, but would not harm the bunch of yahoos who would try to have unpracticed duels with them, for a play they were producing), and it still included "word" in the word "Sword," I input "Swordsmith" going for a triple pun. Alas, once again, it was taken . . . also by someone who was not posting or even visiting! (I later learned when I substituted for the Sysop that it was the SAME GUY! He'd also grabbed any combination that included anything ending in "smith"). Further thinking lead me to the idea that a Smith is a maker of things, so I input "Swordmaker" and low-and-behold, it was available.

For the next 30 years or so, I have been known as Swordmaker online. The vanity license plate on my car even reads SWRDMKR.

A funny. . .

My ex-wife's mother's maiden name was Brown.

She married a man named Johnson.

Her daughter, my now ex-wife married a man (me) named Smith.

Noticing the progression of more and more common names, we told our elder daughter that unless she was planning to continue the progression by marrying someone named Wang or Wong, It was up to her to break this family pattern of the women in our family marrying a more and more common named man and she'd have to marry someone with a long name to do it.

She took our advice to heart. . .

Our older daughter is now Mrs. Long!