i am obsessed with origins today. please humor me.
Starting a viral post (the word 'meme' always seems inaccurate and overused). Curious to see where it'll go. I never was very good at this social-networking thingamawhatsit.
What was the story behind your LJ name?
If you want to play, post the story of your name's origin in your journal, along with this paragraph; tag five others.
I tag 3smallishmagi, fridaypeach, stolen_tea, sabdapranam, caladri. You're all it! Go!
Edited: I wasn't sure if a viral post's author is supposed to start, or should wait to be tagged. Ok, then. :)
Two of my great, irrational loves are Spanish and geology. Of the gem minerals, moonstone is one of my favorites. It's purely a visual and textural thing; it polishes up to smooth cabochons with flashes of deeply held inner light, the results of bladelike arrangements in the long flat crystals of orthoclase.
Some years ago I lived with a host family in Getafe, Spain. Los Belinchón lived on calle Ópalo - Opal Street. While flipping through my student dictionary to see if ópalo really did mean "opal", it occurred to me to look up "moonstone", which was adularia.
The word stayed, floating around in my head, but I didn't get to use it much. I used to have a different LJ name. I bought a rename token during one of those earlier cycles of change (it was $15; the next time around, my rename token cost $110, and got me two official notarized copies and a court date...) and wanted a name to do with geology. I thought of "cuprous" and other metal adjectives and then remembered that page in my Spanish dictionary.
Relatively recently I learned that the English word for those deep flashes is adularescence, which is related to chatoyancy, the cat's-eye effect shown in some beryls and tourmalines. Wikipedia says it comes from a subtype of moonstone found in a Swiss mountain range, the Adula Mountains.
What was the story behind your LJ name?
If you want to play, post the story of your name's origin in your journal, along with this paragraph; tag five others.
I tag 3smallishmagi, fridaypeach, stolen_tea, sabdapranam, caladri. You're all it! Go!
Edited: I wasn't sure if a viral post's author is supposed to start, or should wait to be tagged. Ok, then. :)
Two of my great, irrational loves are Spanish and geology. Of the gem minerals, moonstone is one of my favorites. It's purely a visual and textural thing; it polishes up to smooth cabochons with flashes of deeply held inner light, the results of bladelike arrangements in the long flat crystals of orthoclase.
Some years ago I lived with a host family in Getafe, Spain. Los Belinchón lived on calle Ópalo - Opal Street. While flipping through my student dictionary to see if ópalo really did mean "opal", it occurred to me to look up "moonstone", which was adularia.
The word stayed, floating around in my head, but I didn't get to use it much. I used to have a different LJ name. I bought a rename token during one of those earlier cycles of change (it was $15; the next time around, my rename token cost $110, and got me two official notarized copies and a court date...) and wanted a name to do with geology. I thought of "cuprous" and other metal adjectives and then remembered that page in my Spanish dictionary.
Relatively recently I learned that the English word for those deep flashes is adularescence, which is related to chatoyancy, the cat's-eye effect shown in some beryls and tourmalines. Wikipedia says it comes from a subtype of moonstone found in a Swiss mountain range, the Adula Mountains.