What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.
It's good to be open-minded. But if you're
too open-minded, your brains fall out.
___
The name was bestowed upon me by a colleague during my first teaching job in the early 90s. She was in her 70s, and had spent her wild youth skiing and drinking in occupied Japan in the early 1950s. For months each year, she taught a cultural study of Japan. I collaborated with her on this, which involved taking on all manner of projects such as sewing my own kimono and obi, having tea with a revered koi importer, and learning to make ink.
Miko, in Japan, are Shinto priestesses. They assist with temple ceremonies, and are thought to be intermediaries between heaven and earth. They are considered to have a mystical aura, and are believed to serve as an oracle capable of channeling kami, or shrine spirits. They sell amulets and small paper fortunes called omikuji, and tend shrines. . The name became mine because it is phonetically very close to my real name -- not because I am channeling Shinto deities (To my knowledge, I am not, but if that changes, MeFites will be the first to know).
I started using Miko as a username in 1997, because I could never get any variation on my true name (a hypercommon first name + a common English noun surname). And since then, I've grown to like it so much that Miko have I stayed and will remain.
