What's in a name?

So today at work I was discussing with several of my co-workers the idea of a pen name. Recently, my creative writing teacher told me that if I get published, I may want to consider writing under a pen name because most Middle School parents might not appreciate my writing style and wonder if I am exposing their children to my writing. I think that he has a valid point, but whenever I think of a possible pen name, it sounds so corny and non-realistic. Granted, I could just go by my first and middle initials and my last name, but I feel like that's a bit of a cop-out.

One of my coworkers suggested using my stripper name. My stripper name? What did he think I was--a dancer by night? "I... don't have a... stripper name?" was my reply. "No, no," he said, "you take the name of your first pet and the street name that you lived on when you had that pet. So my name would be Sunny Rainbow." Hah, pretty good stripper name, but a bit cliche. "Oh, okay," I said, "I'd be Meesha Thrush." That got a few chuckles. I can picture the book tour posters now: 'Meesha Thrush, author of such classics as When Your Pants Catch Fire and I Once Choked On a Hairball, will be visiting Barnes & Noble this Friday from 8-11am for a book signing followed by a brief reading of her award winning story Periods, Penis Diagrams, and the Anatomy of an Orgasm.' Because if the titles of my story collections do not catch the readers' attention, my Playboy-esk name sure as hell will.

We all started shouting out our possible porn star names, but none of them were perfect. Spot Twelveth. Maddie Browning. Forcible Robin Hood. No, none of these were as good as the name my current neighbor can have: Sassy Minx. Yes, Sassy Minx. It's perfect, not for an author, but she's a good looking kid, so I'm sure that Hugh Heffner wouldn't mind adding her to the mix when she hits eighteen in five years.

Then we got on the subject of taking the first two letters of your first name and combining them with the first two letters of your last name. This gave me the name: Aler. That just makes me think of a Medieval warrior. "Aler, son of Hrothgar, son of Beowulf, son of Aragorn, ruler of Gondor, defeater of the Saxons, sovereign of all England." You know, Beowulf, Lord of the Rings, and Monty Python all rolled into one. Nobody else's name sparked the kind of interest that mine did.

Ultimately, I decided on keeping my real name. Maybe I'll think of a good pen name later on in life if it gets to that point, but for now I'm not a big deal, so my name'll do just fine.