Noms de Clavier - DorothyL - The Official Website

Noms de Clavier on DorothyL:
Maintainer of the Noms de Clavier list: Michael Kovacs, Michael.TheSaint@gmail.com

Why do we have Noms?.When DorothyL was started a number of subscribers thought it would add to their enjoyment of the list to adopt a special DorothyL persona, an identity that would be mystery-related. Thus one of the founders, Diane Kovacs, adopted the Nom de Clavier of Harriet Vane.

There is no requirement, nor even a recommendation or suggestion, that posters to DorothyL have noms. In fact, most DorothyLers do not have noms. Noms have always been just a bit of fun for some of our subscribers, and that's all they will ever be.

Derivation of the term "Nom De Clavier":.The term 'Nom de Clavier' is based on a play on words. We are all familiar with the term 'Nom de Plume' or pen-name (based on the French word for 'pen'.) Since our access to DorothyL involves use of a computer and we use the computer keyboard instead of a pen to write our messages to DorothyL, we replaced the word for 'pen' by the term used in music for a keyboard: 'clavier'. Thus, a Nom de Clavier, or Keyboard Name.

Guidelines for Adoption of a Nom:. As the practice of using Noms became more wide-spread some guidelines and a registration procedure became necessary so as to avoid conflicts. The guidelines are very simple.

The nom may represent a person, either fictional or real, or an animal (e.g., Giant Rat of Sumatra) or a thing (e.g., Tailor Paul, a bell in Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors) or a concept (e.g., The daughter of time, i.e., Truth from Elizabeth Tey's novel Daughter of Time) or even a word (e.g., the Latin word 'placet' by which Harriet Vane accepts Lord Peter Wimsey's proposal of marriage in Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night).
The nom may come from books or movies or TV or radio or the comics or the Internet or from any other medium that may appear in the future, but it should always have some relationship to a mystery.
The name of a living person or recently dead (in the past decade) may NOT be chosen as a nom. You can choose to be known as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Dorothy L. Sayers or Ellis Peters, but NOT as Elizabeth Peters or Jan Burke or Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky or Parnell Hall or Nancy Atherton. Only they are entitled to use their names, whether or not they are subscribed to DorothyL.
It is possible for different people to choose noms related to different aspects of the same person, e.g. a maiden name (Harriet Vane) and a married name (Lady Peter Wimsey). However, such a practice is subject to confusion and every attempt should be made to avoid such variants.
One's own name cannot be a nom unless it is used as the name of a character in some mystery-related medium.

Registration of Noms:.there is NO obligation for a subscriber to DorothyL to adopt a Nom. Some subscribers do; many others don't. However, if you do decide you want to adopt a Nom it is a good idea to first check the most current Noms de Clavier list to see if the Nom of interest to you has already been adopted.

To obtain a copy of the list:

address e-mail to listserv@listserv.kent.edu
send the message: get nomsde.clavier

The list is updated about every six to eight weeks and announcements of each update are sent to Dorothyl along with a list of the NEW noms added in that update.

Once you have determined that the nom you want is available, send a message directly to Michael.TheSaint@gmail.com. Include your real name, the nom you want, and a brief description of the nom (if fictional character, give the author, plus any other characterizing details). Do NOT send your request to DorothyL! If you change your email address you do not need to inform Michael as he does not include email addresses in the Noms list.

If you stop reading DorothyL and you have a Nom:.Please let Michael know if he can release your Nom for others to use.

Other questions:.Please contact: Michael Kovacs, Maintainer of the Noms de Clavier list Michael.TheSaint@gmail.com