nemoorange.com

NemoOrange: An Etymology

I first created the name during fledgling days in the online world, while I was in middle school, circa 1997. My generation was caught in the waves of the dot com boom, and I needed an appropriate alias if I wanted to be a part of it. There were chatroom handles, email addresses and most importantly, AOL Instant Messenger screen names to be established.

Little boy, big dreams

Nemo comes from Little Nemo. I had encountered the character primarily from a children's movie Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland and the accompanying NES video game Little Nemo: The Dream Master. These works were based off of a turn-of-the-century comic strip, Little Nemo by Winsor McCay. The central figure, Nemo, is a young boy whose escapades take him to the fantastical dream world of Slumberland. I could imagine no better character align my online identify with. Moreover, in Latin, nemo means "nobody." You know how cool nihilism is in eighth grade.

A wonderful color

I chose Orange as surname for practical purposes. Instead of attaching an arbitrary numerical prefix like Nemo6518, Orange would be something you could easily remember. It is one of my favorite colors. A lot of designers get turned off by its vibrancy, so you have to know how to use it. As you can see, I've continued the association by coloring all the links orange.

Not that cute fish

All was good for a couple years, until in 2003, Disney released Finding Nemo. It featured a fish named Nemo. An orange fish named Nemo. Never mind the fact that the flick was wildly successful and even more entertaining; what a crushing blow to my online persona! So now when I IMed that cute girl in History, I imagine she thought of me as that stupid little fish. Perhaps this wasn't so bad. At least it would be easier to remember the screen name. Then again, what's worse . . . explaining your name comes from a cartoon character or from a computer-generated fish? I guess it wasn't so bad.

Either way, I have stuck by the name through the years. It was only last year that I switched my AIM screen name from nemoorange to dwdesandro (for occupational purposes and to level the playing field when I supplied the screen name picking up chicks). I'm still not to happy by the way it looks. Having those two O's in the middle there makes you read it Nemoo Range. That sounds like a Star Wars location or something.

I suppose this is far too much information than you could have really wanted. But etymologies are always great to learn. C'mon now, how many times have you impressed others by explaining the origins behind classic titles like Steely Dan or N*Sync? My point, exactly.