I was surprised to see this clip from The Colbert Report in which media personalities casually spoke about their ‘porn names’ as if it was the most commonplace thing in the world to have one.
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Is this some kind of hip trend that I had not heard of before? What’s the point?
As far as I could tell from the clip, a common mechanism for creating one is to combine your pet’s name with the name of the street on which you live. If that is the case, then my porn name would be ‘Baxter Townley’ which actually sounds pretty good, don’t you think?
(This clip was aired on January 17, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
27 comments
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glodson
January 21, 2013 at 5:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sometimes it is called the “stripper name.” And it is the first pet you had, and the street you grew up on. As far as I know, no one really uses this to generate a porn pseudonym. But people have been doing it around here since I was a kid in the late 80′s.
Mine would have been Peanut Pinnacle. But if we allowed for current street and pet names, it would be Mason Coney Island.
Rodney Nelson
January 21, 2013 at 5:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rover Ninth just doesn’t sound like a proper porn name.
Enkidum
January 21, 2013 at 5:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I used to hear middle name and the street you grew up on. Robert Rockhurst for me, which isn’t too bad.
Jared A
January 21, 2013 at 5:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, I agree that this is a pretty well-known game, but maybe it was invented a generation later than Mano’s. “Baxter Townley” is an exceptionally good male stripper name.
machintelligence
January 21, 2013 at 6:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gee, I rather like Simon Lawler. This could be fun.
Off topic, but could you put a log in button down here at the bottom of the comment thread?
The one at pharyngula could be used as a model.
Mano Singham
January 21, 2013 at 7:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I checked at Pharyngula and it looks the same here as there, to me at least.
Could you be more specific about the difference (with screen caps if possible)? Also, what benefit does it offer?
machintelligence
January 22, 2013 at 2:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It may just be that WordPress doesn’t like me. If I have not logged in it recognizes my blogonym and e-mail address, but when I try to post a comment I get a “possible imposter” warning page. The WordPress button at the top will get me logged in but the text I had typed earlier is lost. I have figured a work around by opening a new tab and going to pharyngula to log in and then returning to this page, but it is inconvenient. Sadly I don’ t know how to do screen caps.
cswella
January 21, 2013 at 6:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Butch Findley
mnb0
January 21, 2013 at 6:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Flop Jie Sam Foek. Doesn’t seem to work well in non-English speaking countries.
julian
January 21, 2013 at 7:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Name of first pet and street you grew up on?
….um…
Trouser Troutman
>_>
Yeah, I’ll stick with julian.
Loqi
January 21, 2013 at 7:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mickey 220th Avenue. Not bad.
Donnie
January 21, 2013 at 8:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, this game has been around for decades: Tiger Ogemaw. Not bad if I was native American :/
Zeno
January 21, 2013 at 8:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It was an Internet meme several years ago. I have to admit that “Toby Woodville” sounds like the real thing.
obscurefox
January 21, 2013 at 9:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have always wondered if this was some weird sort of phishing thing as so many sites ask what is your first pets name as a secret question. It’s probably pretty silly of me to think that.
Mine would be Henri Pleasant, kind of odd as I’m not a guy.
Of course I rarely use my pets name for a secret question or if it is the only choice, that I have any chance of remembering, I choose the name of my first pet that I got on my own.
sosw
January 22, 2013 at 11:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
OT but if you’re registering somewhere where you’re genuinely concerned about security, you should never, ever answer the secret question as asked, and instead use it as an opportunity to have a secondary passphrase.
Even if you forget it it’s better than having something easily susceptible to a trivial dictionary attack. Most services offer better methods for re-authenticating (challenge-response over a secondary, more trusted channel, such as e-mail or mobile phone).
Yellow Thursday
January 21, 2013 at 10:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gandalf Eleventh. Nope, doesn’t sound good.
If I use my first pet and the street I grew up on, though: Sugar Park. Yeah, that sounds like a porn name. lol
F [nucular nyandrothol]
January 21, 2013 at 11:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, this thing has been around for quite a while, but I don’t know what is up with the media heads in this regard. I’ve also run into different formulae for deriving the “porn name”, and other things you do with names to discover some other thing in a more-or-less superstitious manner (even if just for entertainment) .
Best wishes,
Pepper 224
bbgunn
January 22, 2013 at 9:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I may have a new career opportunity as ‘Fluffy Splitlog.’
T. Hunt
January 22, 2013 at 10:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thunder Cox.
If only I had known…
Tom
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
January 22, 2013 at 1:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
bbgunn, we may be related. I’m Fluffy Sawmill.
JohnnyAl
January 22, 2013 at 2:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My street name has 2 words in it, so I guess I could just use one of them. Not sure about Jake Sycamore, but Jake Ridge isn’t too bad.
Aliasalpha
January 22, 2013 at 10:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The version i know was middle name plus street name so mine would be Richard Best
Suido
January 23, 2013 at 10:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Goldy Hardacre.
Awwww yeah.
estraven
January 31, 2013 at 10:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hmmm. Billy Romeo Plank. Or, middle name version, Dee Romeo Plank. Either way, not effective …
Ewgenij Belzmann
February 9, 2013 at 12:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hm, Cleopatry Zhukovsky wouldn’t be half bad, if I wasn’t a guy. Is there some provision in this game for mismatching gender-specific pet names?
P.S.: And no, don’t have a middle name. What’s up with people having several names anyways? Always found kinda weird. One is quite enough for me, thank you very much.
Mano Singham
February 9, 2013 at 2:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I agree that middle names seem unnecessary. My parents gave middle names to the children to commemorate family members whom they respected or who had died.
Ewgenij Belzmann
February 9, 2013 at 3:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I guess it is a question of tradition then. Here in Germany, where I live, most middle names come from godparents, which is apparently a thing most people here take fairly seriously despite an overall secularity in most everyday issues. But where I come from (former Soviet Union) there has been no such tradition, at least in several generations back. And in the traditions of my culture (Russian-Jewish) it apparently was common to name children with the name of grandparents (or even further back) or at least match the initials, which was the case for me.