The article will be a bit different to all my other articles because it will deal with myself, or better: my digital self. As you might have seen already, the nick or online handle I am using now is z_edian. Let me tell you a the story how it come to this nick.
When I was young and hitting it off with the Internet I figured that I need a nickname. You needed them to register yourself even though back then, there were less portals and websites where you actually needed to register. It was more for the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and forums. I read somewhere that ‘z’ stands for the evil which was kind of cool and appealing to me. So I used it for quire some time. When I was hanging out in IRC more often I had the problem that my nick was always ‘already in use’. This means that another user on this IRC network already uses the nickname ‘z’. This was the time when I started shifting to another nick. One event that occurred to me was – in hindsight – very funny. It was night and I was alone at home. I connected to my favorite IRC server and found out that ‘z’ was not in use. so I changed my nickname to ‘z’. Half an our later, I got a message from someone, telling me that if I do not change my nick he will ‘rip my head off’ and do whatever with it. Kindly, I asked him what is problem was. He told me to finally stop using this nick because it belongs to him [sic]. Being nice, I told that this was the first time, I ever used it on this IRC because it was already in use – and instantly changed my nick. He figured that it was someone else who alwys used his [still sic] nick and apologized. Still being able to carry my head on my shoulder, I changed my nickname to zed.
The funny thing about the change from ‘z’ to ‘zed’ is of course the thing with being threatened but also that it is derived from me not knowing how to pronounce the letter ‘z’ in English. I thought the pronunciation of ‘Z’ is ‘zed’ – that is why I chose it. Actually, the pronunciation of z is more like zeee. Well, ‘zed’ it was for quite some time until there were more and more websites where you had to register and due to whatever reasons they did not allow short nicknames. I would understand short passwords but short nicknames? Well, I adjusted and was using some numbers and other characters after zed.
I do not know why I thought the extension ‘ian’ sounded nice but it was and so I came up with ‘zedian’. That was already in the 21st century. zedian sounds like a person but still male, indicates from where the nick is originally originated and sounds kind of okay. Also, it distinguished me from all the other zed’s in cyberspace. There were quite a lot by now and whenever I registered for a website which was already up and running for some time, there was already a zed registered. Two good reasons why I shifted to zedian. In IRC I was still using either zedian or z_doingwhatever such as z_afk or z_sleeping or my all-time favorite: z_zzzZZZZzz for sleeping. These two elements brought me to my current nick since 2011: z_edian.
z_edian basically distinguishes from the (fewer than zed’s) other people with the same handle in cyberspace. It also is long enough to pass the requirements for all websites. Additionally, it attributed quite well, where my nick originally came from: the ‘Z’. Having all these things in place looks neat. To my embarrassment, it was only now that I looked up what ‘zedian’ means. Actually, I searched for it in order to find out how many zedian’s are out there in cyberspace. zedian is Greek and stands for ‘early ages’.
z_edian stands for my early ages in cyberspace by highlighting the ‘z’ but also by it’s meaning when translated from Greek. This is the evolution from ‘z’ during the early ages of cyberspace to ‘z_edian’ in the present.
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