As my username being Japanese in origin got mentioned on the AI generated picture thread…
I’ve been meaning to explain my username… I have no personal connection to Japan at all. In fact the username doesn’t originally have any association with Japan for me…
The name came from a roleplaying game that provided lists of names for different cultural backgrounds within the game. Mine was supposed to from an Arab inspired culture… at least I thought it was. I thought it was a variant on “Yasmina”. Funny enough my character was from the Japan-inspired part of that fantasy world but her family came from a different place so I chose that name–I played her for ~10 years and her adopted daughter for another 6.
I only much later found out about the name being Japanese in origin. Back in 2000 I didn’t do any research when I chose this name. Nobody was talking about cultural appropriation–the term had not been coined yet. And also I had no idea that randomly chosen usernames would stick forever. So… I get a lot of Japanese spam on my gmail address as a result and I warn kids that they need to think about usernames they choose for Steam and other places because they will be keeping those for a long long time.
My username is stuck to me so much, that I have accidentally signed into work related stuff with it and confused my colleagues. But we’ve played games together on BGA and now I know all my colleagues usernames as well. I have friends I met online that call my by my username when we talk…
PS: even my partner thought until today I had chosen the name specifically for it being Japanese… 