h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there Binky... ~grin~... just wondered where you got your name... as a very good friend of mine as the same name... and me thought what a coincidence...

Hello Greebo, thanks for the kind welcome.

The name came about when I was opening an account with Demon Internet here in the UK, I needed something to go before the demon.co.uk bit. My wife at the time wanted death (death.demon.co.uk) as she was a big Sandman fan. However I wasn't overly comfortable with that (no kidding!) so we came to a compromise and chose binky, that being the name of Death's hore in the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels. A close enough connection.

I became known as binky when I started working for Wizards of the Coast (makers of Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon TCGs) as was given the email address [email protected] (my ex-wife got to the email admin before I did). The address was fairly heavily publicised and people just started calling me Binky. It kinda stuck and I've, where possible, used it as a login ever since.

So there you go.

Neil.

Thanks... very consise... ~grin~... me loves that email addie... My name comes from the Discworld as well... me is a big fan... and me loves Death's Horse... and the name always makes me grin... ~grin~... see!!!

I have a few binky@ email addys... though recently I've gone back to using more normal ones.

I think I have way to many addresses as it is

Neil.

MAY I JOIN IN AS WELL I ALSO AM FAMILIAR WITH BOTH OF YOUR NAMES DONT WORRY I JUST POPPED IN TO SAY HELLO..................

Welcome to the party

I suppose I should trawl through all the researcher names and see who has been similarly influenced.

Neil.

Hey DEATH... ~grin~... hope you are not here for Binky or me... ~bigger grin~... this is getting into a proper discworld meet... isn't it...

AS I SAID I JUST POPPED IN TO SAY HELLO

SEE YOU ALL AT SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE

Hello there. Oddly enough, I am also often known as Binkie, ending 'ie' you'll notice though, not 'y'. I have been known as this for all 43 years of my life and found it most amusing when I read Mort (I think) by Terry Pratchet and found that his horse was called Binky. There's a Binkle in an A. A. Milne poem too (Winnie the Pooh author). During my adolescence, I got emabarrassed by the nickname and all but one sister and her family ceased to call me it. Now I don't mind being called it. I get a little possessive about all my names actually and tend to think, 'Hey, that's MY name'. I guess that comes from me and the rest of my family having names that I rarely come across. I've never really understood the desire to call all the same gender members of a family by one name. I know a woman in whose family there is a Big Jim (husband), a Wee Jim (brother) an Our Jim (nephew) and a My Jim (son). The adjectives are the only way they can be diferentiated.
I tend to think that names should be a little more individual but then I was brought up to call my parents by their first names and not by labels. I do find it bizarre that folk call their parents by the labels Mum and Dad or equivalent. They don't usually call their offspring just son or daughter rather than using their names. Just the same with aunts and uncles, THEY don't talk about neice and nephew when addressing those family members. My daughter and the offspring of all my siblings use first names too. We're all just as respectful of each other as any label user could be. We were, however, given the choice of what to call our parents and each went through a novelty phase, of a day to a week, calling our mothers Mum, reverting quickly to the more personal use of first names.