Re: This may have been discussed before
Posted by:
Magda (---.dialip.mich.net)
Date: May 29, 2003 04:58AM
Magda is what most of my friends call me at this point, even the ones who've known me since before I was called that.
It's derived from the name I use in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), which is Lady Magdalena Vogelsang.
That name, in turn, was chosen in part because early in my SCA days (1990ish) at our local Wassail revel, I played Mary Magdalene in a very silly (and somewhat tacky) mime ballad in which I attempted to hire a private eye (complete with trenchcoat and fedora) to look for a missing body. I got the part mainly because I had the cleavage and low cut dress for it. And I got to smack the gumshoe a couple times for oogling too blatantly--which was great fun since he was a professional actor, and fell across the room quite impressively when I swung at him and missed (on purpose).
After this, there was one woman in particular who could never remember my real name, but instead exlaimed every time she saw me "It's Mary Madgalene!". So when I finally got 'round to picking a proper medieval name, I thought it would be amusing to play on that.
At any rate, when a second 'Deb' joined the local group, she--being only about 5 feet tall and 90 pounds--got called 'Little Deb' (which evolved into 'Snackcake'). In true medieval nomenclature, I would have then become known as 'Big Deb'. But my friends are more polite than that, so they started using my SCA name all the time, and now call me 'Magda', whether we're at an SCA event or not. In fact, many people think it's my legal name.
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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith