A funny story about my username

So my username, for year and years and years, was Cuchlann. It's from Irish myth. Cuchulainn, the great hero of the Ulster cycle, once came late to a party and was prevented from entering by the host's guard dog. He killed the dog, proving how strong he was. To apologize, once the misunderstanding was cleared up, he lived for several years as the man's "guard dog" until he could raise and train another. Cuchulainn means "hound of Cuchlann."

Cuchulainn was taken on AOL Instant Messenger when I made an account in 2001, you see.

But that year I also signed up for a fanfic.net account, as they added a section for original fiction. I didn't get very far on my godawful fantasy novel about the one guy from outside the magical kingdom who uses guns (oh look, it's Not-Vash-the-Stampede, where'd he come from?). But I did have to pick a name. And I chose Calliope.

There are, in retrospect, a lot of things that could have clued me in that maybe I wasn't cisgender, but I didn't know it was a thing, transiting away from my assigned gender. I didn't know trans people existed, even as bad jokes. I'd already managed to bury the memories that would only surface nearly two decades later, during a ritual. I tell you that to tell you this: I never realized it was meaningful to have given myself a girl's name. Not until after the ritual, and the first round of agonizing, and the realizations, and navigating terminology I'd been learning as an ally that I realized I needed for myself.

As you may know, Calliope was one of the Muses, she who teaches the arts of epic poetry. She's also associated, in some obscure writings that got collated into Agrippa, with the highest sphere of the world's spheres, the tippity top of the world, basically, before you get to the Oneness (if you're into that kind of Platonism). That obviously appealed to me, as I was aspiring to write fantasy fiction.

But, and this is why this is a funny story, that's not now I came across the name as something I might call myself. See, I grew up in the 90s. I graduated high school in 2001, as the Beanie Baby hype was beginning to fall off. I, and several of my band classmates, were collectors. So as a graduation gift, someone got me a Beanie stuffy, a blue fuzzy bear in a clown costume, with a Harlequin hat. Its name was Calliope, and it makes a joke about jesters on the little heart-shaped tag. You can see some examples here. At some point, I looked up why a little clown jester guy might be called Calliope, and I learned that the steam organ we all associate with circuses and river boats is called a calliope. There's some music on that site and you can find more on youtube. That really charmed me, somehow, I don't know why. So I chose that as my name.

Years later, getting back into Final Fantasy 14 because my partner was trying it out, I made a new character and, of course, they had to be a lady, not a man. And I named her Calliope. I actually know a lot of my guild members in real life, so there are a group of people who already called me Callie, since we tend to use screen names a lot even in voice chat. So it was easy to slip into it. My partner started calling me Callie, to herself, and then she asked me and I said it would make me happy. So that's sort of it, now. I don't hate Gregory, I don't think I plan to legally change my name, but I'm also Callie. It's not just a screen name any more. It's just one of my names.