Wednesday, June 01, 2005

What makes a good gaydar profile name?

Any gaydar or gay.com user gets used to looking at guy’s profile names. But what makes a good profile name? Last weekend I jotted down a whole load of profile names of guys in the “UK London – Central Cruising” gaydar chat room to see what the common themes are, and to decide what type of names I think work best.

To get a good sample I wrote down the profile names of all the guys who arrived within a certain time period, irrespective of whether I liked or even understood their profile name. The main themes that emerged are sexual, age or year of birth, location or London postcode, names or initials, and combinations of these themes. Although the majority of the names were descriptive to some extent, there were also quite a few which meant nothing to me.

So how did I interpret the names I saw? To start with, some guys specify their age in their profile name. Of course the problem with specifying age is that within a year the profile name will be out of date! None the less, of the profile names in my sample I reckon the following were probably telling me the age of the guy, and perhaps his name or initials too:

ultraboy18, ukmatt18, youngjake18, fitnik24, lf26, latino35,

and the following were probably telling me the year the guy was born:

curiouslysexy1980, abfb1976, stephen1976, mr_knightly76, jde80, pet78.

Not many guys give away where they live in their profile name, even though it’s very practical information to have if you interested in meeting someone. This is probably more a desire to remain anonymous than a realiation that like age, this information also gets out of date. In this category there were the following profile names in my sample:

bluepetew3 – probably someone in London postcode W3
lonw1 – probably someone in London postcode W1
ianse14 – probably someone in London postcode SE14
ukladeast1 – probably someone in London postcode E1
brutusctrlondon – A guy called Brutus in central London?
archway – this is the name of a London underground station
centralfitlad – probably a guy in central London

Another theme is sex of course, although its not as popular as one might have thought. Looking through my sample I found the following

w1cocksucker – a guy in London postcode W1 who likes sucking
tieguyuk – presumably into bondage
.thediscipliner – presumably into master/slave discipline
4u... – presumably a guy who likes being subservient
......butt4u – presumably a guy who likes being fucked
talentedbutt – presumably a guy who likes being fucked
..arseplay – presumably a guy who likes being fucked
actifuck – sounds like an active guy who likes fucking

In the sexual category I found quite a few guys who specified that they’re a ‘top’ i.e. they like to fuck rather than be fucked.

ynghornytop, eustontopguy, topdom30, khakitop2, shorttop, hung_fit_top

Gaydar does allow male escorts to advertise for work, although I think they have to pay more than ordinary users. There were 4 obvious escorts in my sample:

1xxxescort, paytoplay, ....army-escort, hungescort.

Some guys include a man’s name in their profile name, which in my experience usually does turn out to be their name. In my sample I found:

neilatlantic, alanf25, matthewd67, alanbucks, dwainlondon, cutematty2000, dick.grayson, ...felipe, ..ian4fun, modelluke.

But the vast majority of names in my sample were just generally descriptive. My favourite names were in this category, particularly when there is something clever or amusing about the name:

turbochicken – vigorous young guy
skyworker – presumably works on an airplane
devilsdream – sounds enticing for a naughty session
dirtymonkey – sounds like a bit of a rascal
dirtyminded – another promise of fun times
dreamguy – how can one refuse?
jollytodger – a guy with a happy cock
delboy – cockney character from television comedy
stevethecurious – a guy called Steve wants to know more about gay life
bminor – probably a musician
jockring – a jock with a cockring?
glksmalldick – probably a good looking guy with a small cock!
gwm_ – gay white man
ukgreek – a greek guy in the UK
fitusguy – fit american guy
hornyitguy – guy who works in Information Technology
sg1 – a fan of Sci-Fi TV program Stargate?
boner – a guy with a hard cock
wetboylondon – a swimmer, or into “water sports”?
roughorsmooth – have it your own way
2fuks – presumbaly two fuckers
active_lad_2 – an active lad
blackguy – a black guy
newyoungguy – a young guy new to Gaydar
pundit – a pundit
.....1hotman – hot property?

The last set of names in my sample didn’t mean much to me, or maybe I’m not trying hard enough:

ayanah, negrito7, tiniopalio, ortzi, panda10, goodboymad, anathema, ketcodotcom, nose_candy, guiver1, supernova.2, sacrecoeur, raininspires, acor7, sunman2, goko, sebnw, mistermicool, bch1, cinammon, itsepas, rico2011, h2f., dke13, liathano, stevier, 24hotg, maclondon, spion, djcowboy, ricspapa, sterlingx

When registering with gaydar one has to request a profile name before seeing the kind of names that other guys use, so perhaps this is partially the cause of some of the less meaningful names that one sees. However these days on gaydar, one can ask gaydar support to change your profile name. In the past this wasn’t possible so one had to delete one’s profile and create a new one, which for guys that have put a lot of work into their profile was very inconvenient. But the main problem with profile names is that when one has a good idea for a profile name, one usually finds that someone else has got there first!

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