A group of Second Life friends have begun urgently reviewing their display names after discovering that their decorative flourishes were an assortment of foreign letters, punctuation and the number six.
The crisis began when ღ Brielle ღ learned that the symbols surrounding her name were Georgian letters called ghan, representing a sound roughly like a throaty “gh”.
“I thought they were little hearts,” she said. “I was expressing that I’m a loving person.” Instead, an attempt to sound out the characters produced something the group described as “a man trying to get Brielle’s attention while choking on a crisp”.
Brielle, whose profile describes her as “a whisper on the wind”, said she had specifically chosen the symbols to suggest tenderness. “I wasn’t expecting my name to require a glass of water afterwards.”
Concern quickly spread to Ϯ Malachi Ϯ, who had spent fourteen years allowing people to assume his name was framed by ancient crosses representing his dominion over the boundary between life and death. The symbols turned out to be the Coptic letter Dei.
“They still have power,” he insisted, although he was unable to specify whether this was spiritual power or simply the ability to form part of a word.
Malachi later updated his profile to describe himself as “a student of ancient languages”, shortly before asking whether Coptic was the one they spoke in Wales.
Tamsin ツ was initially amused by the situation, until somebody explained that her cheerful little face was the Japanese katakana character tsu. “So it’s Tamsin Tsu?” she asked. “It sounds like you’ve got a surname,” said Brielle.
Tamsin said she had added the character to appear friendly and approachable, and was disappointed to learn she had instead spent eight years sounding like someone who might be able to sort out your accounts, “I’ve put that on all my DJ posters.” Further enquiries revealed that ༺ Elowen ༻ had enclosed herself in Tibetan punctuation.
Elowen, who believed the marks represented celestial wings, was visibly upset. “My partner calls me his angel.” After a pause, Tamsin asked whether he would be willing to call her his parenthetical remark.
Elowen declined to comment further, although witnesses confirmed she remained standing between the punctuation for the rest of the evening.
The most damaging discovery concerned ๖ Dax, who had added what he described as “a dark, almost serpentine flourish” to give his name a sense of danger. It was the Thai numeral six.
“Six Dax,” said Tamsin. “It’s not pronounced like that.” “It is if it’s a six.”
Dax explained that the symbol represented the coiled energy of his inner beast. This explanation was undermined when someone asked whether he came in a multipack.
He briefly considered moving it to the end of his name, but abandoned the idea after being told that “Dax Six” sounded like a discontinued men’s deodorant.
Meanwhile, ด Colette ด discovered that both her decorative loops were the Thai letter do dek, representing a D sound. She had chosen them because they looked “soft and feminine”. The group’s experimental pronunciation of “D-Colette-D” was interrupted by somebody asking whether she was about to play a garage set. “I’m not changing it,” she said. “It’s on my wedding invitations.”
A visiting linguist attempted to reassure the residents that using characters decoratively did not mean their names had to be pronounced according to every language involved. This sensible distinction was ignored because Six Dax had just returned from being AFK.
By midnight, the group had agreed to remove all characters they did not understand. Malachi said his name now looked “like a bloke who fixes boilers”, while Elowen complained that she felt exposed without her punctuation.
Brielle said the experience had been particularly painful because her partner wore matching Georgian letters as a symbol of their eternal bond.
“We thought we were two hearts together, apparently we were gargling.”