(no subject)

Tip: Might be a good idea to start shredding your airline ticket stubs.

Username

It occurred to me that one of the mildly interesting questions to ask on LJ is, where did your username come from, and why did you pick it?

My username is a Welsh word meaning something like "blazing." It was the name of an important sword in one of my favorite series of books as a child/young adult, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. My first MUD character was named Eirias. She was a redheaded fairy and pretty insignificant at everything. Some years later, I had this name registered on a couple of IRC servers (though I expect it's expired by now), so when I got an LJ mostly for the purpose of stalking people I chatted with on IRC, it was the natural name to choose. However, eleven years later I'm still not positive how it ought to be pronounced. I say "EE-ree-us" in my head, but my recently-acquired rudimentary knowledge of Welsh suggests the accent should be on the second syllable, and I have no idea about Welsh vowel space...

Readers, some of you have pretty obvious names, but with others of you I am lost. I am particularly curious about the origins/personal significance of corydoras, darlox, elwe, nonnihil, sagittalbreast, and upsilon, all of which are opaque to me. But everyone is invited to respond :).