Re Syz, aka Steve Hansen
Can you call it a secret if everyone knows and no one cares?
Since 2007 I’ve blogged under the pseudonym Syz (the initials of my Chinese name). It started out with the best of paranoid intentions — in the early days I once begged Victor Mair to take down a Language Log reference to my real name, and he was kind enough to indulge me.
After a while, though, the pseudonym became a habit there didn’t seem to be any reason to break. Sure, practically anyone I had an email exchange with quickly learned my real name, but that was all the more reason not to make any big deal of it.
And I’m not trying to make a big deal of it now, it’s just that I want to get it done. Why? The most important reason is that Kellen and I are about to unveil a project we’ve been working on. It will involve a lot of online and offline collaboration and it just makes sense to use real names from the start. I want to get the Real Name Unveiling out of the way beforehand so it doesn’t add any noise to the project launch.
Then the immediate reason is like this: The good Steven Daniels of the Mandarin-learning blog Lingomi included me in an interview series he’s doing. The interview is up now, and in the introduction he mentions my first name… so what the heck, gimme a 干杯: Steve Hansen.
I’ll eventually get around to updating the About pages and so forth, but I’ll continue blogging using Syz here and on Beijing Sounds, just cuz he’s kind of grown on me.
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Update next day, since Claw was bored enough to do the sleuthing to match me to a photo…
Hi!
Woop woop!
Pseudonyms are so passe in the FB age anyway.
When do we get our +1 and Like buttons, Steve?
I see that I am indeed one of those people who has learned your name from emails, but as it was SO important to note at the time, learning again here is like the first time all over again!
Thanks translits, and as I told Sinoglot’s own Sima offline: you’ll get no pressure from this convert to change your pseudonymous ways. I’ll always have a place in my heart for some good old-fashioned paranoia.
You might also be glad to know that, aside from the real name change, everything’s about the same. I’m still stuck in the dark ages of the information superhighway, on some byway where i have to stare at things like “FB” for several minutes before realizing it’s that service that coworkers tried to get me to join before I left for China.
Still in the dark, real name and all.
Hi Steve! Congrats, I went through the same thing 2 years ago, for similar reasons. I was a bit nervous about it at first, but up to now I have never regretted it. Nothing wrong with using pseudonyms, of course. But if you believe in what you are doing and you want other people to believe it as well, I think it helps to endorse it with your name.
Anyway it’s not like “syz” or “uln” were giving us any protection , they wouldn’t have stood a chance against a proper 人肉 human flesh hunt…
Can’t wait to hear about this new project. Finally some exciting news at Sinoglot!
BTW, I thought of you when I saw this today: http://weibo.com/zt/s?k=12859
Absolutely check it out if you haven’t yet. As an expert in children character learning, do you think this can possibly be the work of a 10 year old alone? (I find it difficult to believe).
PS. Does sinoglot have a weibo?
Ok Steve.
Glad to read the post. Thanks as usual for awesome content!
Josh
This got me curious so I searched for which post it could be. Was it this one?
Now we know what you look like too!
Julen, actually I was thinking about you and Jeremiah Jenne (Granite Studio) when I was writing this up. He, too, was pseudonymous early on. I was thinking that since I never post anything block-worthy (although as we all know that’s a nebulous category) let alone wrath-incurring, I must be far ahead of you guys on a relative scale of paranoia 😉
That kid’s story is something else. I’m inclined to say fake, though. I’ll beg out of the “expert” category since I’m only an expert on a sample of one, but maybe I’ll subject the language/writing to some actual analysis sometime.
As for Weibo: we probably should! I happened to overhear some high school girls in a tea shop the other day as they took photos of themselves in front of the store name to update their weibos. We’re way behind the times.
Claw: shoulda known someone would do this! OK, now I’m fully out and I’ve even updated the post with a recent pic to boot. For the record, it wasn’t this post that had my name originally, but even the Google can’t seem to find me the original now. Strange.
I’ve always used maxiewawa. My real name isn’t a secret or anything, I even started a Facebook page for people with the same name as me.
Speaking of which, I followed a FB link here, there doesn’t seem to be an RSS of your blog, is that right?