Note to self: say my name, say my name (both of them)

The first time it happened I was a young, drunk twentysomething swimming out of her depth with the soaks in the Colony.

"And you are ...?", the older, drunker, posher woman drawled, sprawled across the lap of someone related to the famous and talented.

"Louise." I answered.

"Louise who?" she hooted back, irritated.

"Brown" I mumbled, befuddled not just by the large gins I'd been necking for, ooh, about six hours that evening. Did she want to write a letter to me? Fill in a form? Write a cheque?

She shook her head with a disconnected smile and went on with her conversation without me, leaving me to stew in what I assumed was my own jus de social faux pas.

Was it a class thing, I wondered, would she think she might know my family, "Ah, the Dagenham Browns, aren't you related to Madge from the Tote?" Not likely.

Years later I read an article by someone like Alison Pearson where she opined on the habit of young women who only ever introduced themselves as "Samantha" or "Tara" wilfully omitting their last names.

Alison (can't have been Julie, surely?) decried this as the habit of the vain and the vacuous, reducing themselves to a page 3 cartoon caption "Keeley likes Jeffrey Archer novels and chipmunks, and doesn't agree with ecomonic monetary union". She may even have quoted a fine example of this type, the brilliant spokesmodel character SanDeE* played by Sarah Jessica Parker in L.A. Story.

I'd finally got it. The woman in the Colony (can't remember her name - first or last) thought I was being dumb and cute whereas I knew that there was absolutely no chance she would have heard of me and didn't even consider that it might be useful in future for her to know I was a Brown.

To this day I have friends (admittedly not all that close) of whose surnames I have no idea, any confusion with the similarly monikered clarified by their distinguishing features. For example, two of my mum's golfing chums will always be known to me as Big Doreen and Little Doreen and a beautiful, sweet friend of a friend known affectionately as Suzy Boobs.

But I was caught out again on Thursday night when a fellow media industry worker (who shall rename nameless, I bear no ill will) said,

"I didn't catch your name"

And I answered simply "Louise".

This time he was left to physically implore me with an upturned face and outstretched palm to finish the job.

"Oh - Brown, Louise Brown."

Again a shake of the head and a move swiftly on - transporting me right back to that smoky room of my youth.

So really all this post, nestled alongside my various media-related mental meanderings, is, is an elaborate note to self: you are 35 - not 5 - and in social situations it is useful to hear your full name for any number of reasons - professional and personal.

I suppose the likes of Facebook have changed this quite a lot for folks younger than I - you end up knowing people's surnames as well as their inside leg measurement with the click of a mouse - and, scuse me while I adjust my chip, I'm sure there is a little bit of socio-economic change in there somewhere; my Great Aunt Madge never had to network for starters.

Most significantly, in a world where we now know so many freaking people in so many shallow ways (206 Facebook friends, 200 personal email contacts, 121 LinkedIn connections etc. - and that's with no massive outreach effort), the need for a full, distinct name becomes all the more useful. I've even considered the Googlability of my future offsprings' names as a determining factor in their nomenclature given that I'm saddled with the top slots taken up by the first test tube baby.

To think people ask me why I haven't changed my last name since I've got married - I have enough trouble recalling the first one I was given, for heaven's sake.

The Agreeability of Pseudonymity

Ever since someone who went by the name of "my black ass" (complete with associated animated gif) pointed out that my alias on Last.fm "loubrown" wasn't too inventive, I've been wondering about the relative strengths of having an online pseudonym and the relative weakness of having my identity so clearly strewn across the internet superhighways.

I "came out" in terms of my online persona in response to a lot of soul searching about the fact I worked for a new media department and so might have vested interests or biased opinions that I should be open about.

It wasn't like I was planning some Belle de Jour type revelations (those were the days my friend) or a grand whistle blowing (over a year in, and no evidence of a need for it), but I didn't fancy sneaking around wondering if people knew who I was or could work it out. OK, so I also realised I was less likely to write anything too offensive or incriminating (small lapse in judgment notwithstanding).

However, I now find myself actually embarassed by how much I'm shouting my real name from the virtual rooftops especially as numerous colleagues are now coming out as bloggers and social networkers under various guises. It's a bit like my user names are ALL CAPS and spoken v-e-r-y d-e-l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e-l-y. Loubrown, louby, louisebrown... Yes that's me! Yoo-hoo! Here I am!

There is something so much cooler about having a pseudonym. It's like being the Scarlet Pimpernel or Superman; only a select few know the real you, and everyone else is dying to find out.

My time-suckingly dreadful forays into Second Life as "Thora Turk" (you are forced to choose a first and last name for your character) gave me a flavour of what it might be like to have a pseudonym and associated virtual image. Unfortunately my poor Second Life programming skills meant that rather than the Lara Croft-like Amazon astride the virtual world of my fantasies, Thora/I ended up as a plumpish Japanese schoolgirl with quite big boobs and a ragged, slightly gothic wardrobe and a tendency to accidentally end up sitting on top of road signs.

I blame age. I come from the days of the Internet when to get your real name in hotmail was to have kudos. I leapt at the chance to get a (on my terms) cool gmail address but soon found out the downside having since been saddled with a stream of incorrectly addressed email meant for my numerous dopplegangers (one of them having issues with insurance, another a big skiing fan). If you've sent anything dreadfully personal to me that I haven't responded to, watch out, you might end up in The Metro if the email was incorrectly addressed.

I now have the additional worry that I'll end up giving away enough information here to steal my identity without having to rifle through my bin or glue together my shredded bank statements. There are photos, reading materials, bound to be a biography up there somewhere. People should realise that the idea of your porn name (Name of first pet + Mother's maiden name) was probably cooked up by a really smart identity thief ("How on earth can I get people to reveal the answers to their security questions?).

In fact, my only comfort is that, rather like the owner of a rashly requested tattoo, the likes of "my black ass" will wake up one of these days to find himself saddled with a once-cool but now plain embarassing pseudonym that it's just too hard to change. In the meantime, I'll just have to relax back into my relative lack of obscurity.