Re: Nagginik to dezil_nz
I guess i'm going to have to start from the beginning. Sorry in advance for the lengthy post.
My mate and I were slumped on the ground, bored out of our minds. We were combining words together to try come up with an odd but catchy insult. That's how we came up with my original name. Where I come from, (low socio-economic status and all) Africans are pretty rare, and so the word never came across as overly offensive to me or anyone. At this point in time, the word's profanity was evident to me and was part of the reason I used it as my username for countless other things. Along with this, on sites such as Steam, I found a photo of a dark skinned man on Google images and used him as my profile picture.
Several months after this, I went on an excursion to some university. Now please try to envision the magnificence of what I am about to tell you. I'm in the middle of a hallway, and the dark skinned man, the EXACT same as in my photo, dressed just as formally, appears at the end of the hallway and leaves. My mate finished going toilet, comes out, and the same man reappears at the other end of the hallway. He walks down the hallway. I say 'Hi', and he replies with 'Hello' is the most beautiful accent, the word rolling of his tongue, as smooth as velvet. I was mesmerized. It couldn't be a coincidence. I thought it was destiny. I have used his name for everything ever since. For a long time now, the relevance of the name to me has had nothing to do with profanity. The name is my connection to a euphoric experience I will never forget.
I can predict that you won't consider my experience valid however, so it is not my main argument.
To begin, I have used my original username for various other sites and purposes. Prior to Minecraft, the most critical comment made about it was, 'Lol, why the name?', to which I would reply with the story above, and they would say, 'Haha, ok.' My name has never been an issue. At the end of last year, I bought Minecraft, to make a model town for a class project. To display the town, one of my mates logged in to show the class. Noone saw my name. At about March this year, I jumped on Minecraft with my mates, the first time I had ever played Minecraft with the intention of gaming, on an online server. There I was told to change my name, and I told the moderator my story. He laughed, and said that the server was PG. I told him to show me how to change it, as I didn't know how, and he changed it for me, to 'Nagginik', the name I use now. That was six months ago. Three days ago was the third time I had ever used Minecraft, second time ever with the intention of gaming, first time ever on this server.
Where I live, the word is not viewed as overly offensive, it has never been a problem before Minecraft, and this is the first time my name has had such a severe impact, for which I am sorry. The thought of changing my name didn't occur to me as:
1- I didn't know how
2- It had never been an issue
3- The profane significance of it had long been replaced by the aforementioned incident
4- It had already been changed in Minecraft (I had no idea it was only serverside)
This is the first time my name has had such a negative impact on anyone, for which I am truly sorry. I did not make the name 'Nagginik', it was given to me by another Minecraft server, so I assumed it would be adequate. Furthermore, since I cannot think of any inappropriate conclusion you could draw from 'Nagginik', I assume that you mistook it for my original name. This may owe itself to you knowing my original name. It would be a different matter for those on the server. Regardless, I will change my name as soon as I am able to, as I do not want to cause such severe offence in the future. However, the holidays are nearly halfway through, my mates are playing on this server, and I would really like to join them, so for this reason and the ones stated throughout my reply, I ask you to reconsider my position.
