Surnames....

People can of course call themselves what they like, and doubtless it is curmudgeonly of me to object when they do. But there seems to be a trend for people posting in the Gallery to call themselves by their surname alone: inspired possibly by a photographer, or hairdresser, or whatever the Hell he is, described as Rankin (I have another name for him, which sounds rather similar). My conviction that this is an irritating affectation is reinforced by the impossibility of employing it myself. Who is going to know who "Jones" might be? It's bad enough that there's already another Robert Jones, though he doesn't post here, leading me to have to use my full name when selling or showing pictures; if we both called ourselves Jones, an almost infinite number of others could do the same and then where should we be? I am Spartacus, perhaps .... If your first name were Wilberforce, or Lettice, or Adolf, or Cuthbert-Augustus, or indeed Hypatia, I could understand why you'd not wish to use it. If you had been baptized Justin Gladdis, the fate of one I know at the hands of parents who didn't quite think things through (you may need to think about this, if one of nature's innocents), similarly, I can readily grasp why you might think it best, on the whole, to keep it to yourself. But even then, you can change your own name at will if you wish - there is no need to make yourself sound like a captured German officer offering name, rank and number.... Perhaps I'm getting old, but it all seems a bit ..... well...... silly, to me. Like most emerging trends, it should be pushed firmly back into its hidey-hole.

Well, it arises - I believe - because people didn't register on the site under their own name or any other, and so the site assigns them a number instead to identify them. The trouble seems to be that you can't change this later: the only thing you can do so far as I know is to re-register, with your own name or chosen sobriquet, and probably with a different email address because the site is likely to assume you're trying to register twice (well, you are: but for good reasons).