Today I thought I'd share with you the story behind my name. Where did the term "Phoenyx Jewels" come from? Why don't I spell phoenix correctly? It's actually a very personal journey and, to be fair, really starts in 2004 when I decided to change my religion from Christianity to Wicca (to the horror of my parents).
Once I jumped ship I was almost immediately obsessed with finding a craft name. Can't imagine why, I've always been a solitary practitioner so there was nobody to call me by another name. But it was important for me to choose another name to identify myself within my craft. I knew many Pagans drew from animals, colors, and other symbols to put their names together so I started...taking a bunch of quizzes on Quizilla. I was a bit obsessed with making sure I was taking things that "correctly" represented me. So I took tons of "What's your animal?" and "What's your color?" quizzes and the like. I do remember that my most common animal answer was the wolf and my most common color was blue. From these answer I came up with my first name: Luna Wolf.
Well I stuck with that a few months and decided that it really didn't fit me at all, so that got discarded and I went back to the drawing board. This time I started with my real name, Ashley, and the Magical Craft Name Generator. Okay so I was still at a creative lose for myself but this time I was looking for something that resonated with myself rather than something that was "right." I plugged in my full name and gender and hit generate. I do have to give this particular generator some credit as it has some way of choosing it's words so you will end up with the same name every time. With my real name I get Ashley Crystal-Blodeuwedd. Hmmm...interesting, I changed my middle name out for Crystal in the generator and tried again, Ashley Knowing-Sky. So this is how it went, switching out real names for words that came up which I liked and continuing to generate more ideas. Then this came through:
First thought was, "huh, I kinda like that." After sitting with it for a little while I dropped the "Leaf" in the middle leaving me with Spirit Ashes. This is the craft name I have kept, I like that Ashes is a play off my real name Ashley. Moreover, there's just a connection with this name, I say it and it feels like me. But how did I get from Spirit Ashes to Phoenyx?
I've been a member of a Writing.com for awhile, and in the beginning I used Spirit Ashes as my username and handle (pen name). During Halloween season I noticed that a lot of people were changing their handle's to more spooky and seasonal theme's that still connected back to their regular handles like The Storymaster became, The Spookymaster. I wanted to get in on the fun and thought of how to "seasonalize" my name. I had for awhile though likened the phrase "spirit of the ashes" to my name, thinking of a wisp of smoke coming from the remains of a smoldering fire. It made me think of the phoenix rising from the ashes of a fire, so my Halloween handle became Phoenix. I wound up keeping this name after the season was over because I liked it so much, it felt like a casual version of my craft name.
Fast forward a couple years and I decided to finally give in to friends and join a Live Action Role Play (LARP) called Amtgard. When it came time to choose a persona name, or in-game name, my first gut reaction was to go with Phoenix however I was put off because the phoenix is the symbol of Amtgard and it felt awkward to take the symbol as my own name. That said, it has been done before, to date there are 46 people in the Amtgard Online Record Keeper with phoenix somewhere in their name. I wanted something more unique, but I just couldn't seem to get away from the phoenix idea. While browsing a baby names site I found that Phoenix was actually a proper Greek boy's name and the female equivalent was Phoenyx, bingo, I loved it! When I decide to take a surname for my Amtgard persona I went back to the Greek names (because I like consistency) and chose Orane which means "rising" so my name is Phoenyx Orane which directly translates into "phoenix rising."
I kept the name Orane for 2 years, but it never felt like me. Like "Luna Wolf," I had chosen a name that was "right" but it didn't mean anything to me.
I've always had a joke with a close friend of mine that we're siblings. I'm the "little sister" and he's my "big brother," the kicker is that I'm actually older than he is. He'd been playing Amtgard for years and after I joined we thought....ok, I thought that since we had the joke going we should share the same in-game surname. He'd already established his persona, Ausar Lazarus Valentine, Lazarus being his middle name and something just could never bring me to take the name Valentine. After talking with him about it again I got hooked on what he considers his middle name, Lazarus.
Ok, not the same meaning I was originally going for. But like when I chose Phoenyx, it resonated with me, it meant something to me. And the first time I heard my new name called at court, I had to admit. Phoenyx Lazarus sounds pretty cool.
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