Your username?

[Porkchop]

Oh god... where do I begin??

On most of my ex-forums, I used the names "Islandboy" or "Justanislandboy" from spending most of my summers at a lakehouse on an island in Port Clinton. Which also played off of a country song "Island Boy" by Kenney Chesney..... which is ironic because i fucking hate country music. But I've had to stop using those names because before I arrived here, a certain friend created a joke account on one of those online sex finding sites and used that name.... and i can never use that again.....

So when I actually came here, i needed a new name. Back in high school, like 5 years ago I worked at a pizza place. There were these 2 guys that worked there, like a year older than me that were amature UFC fighters. Funny as hell. These guys would get on these rampages and just crack everybody up, and this one guy always did this "drill sergeant" voice and went around yelling and cussing. Well one day i must have fucked up, and he walked over next to me and yelled out in his sergeant voice "You... are a fucking discrase Porkchop, you'd better fucking shape up maggot!" It stuck, and those 2 guys called me that until I left or college. It might come from a movie????

Basically this is the first time anybody has called me Porkchop since I worked back there.

[z06boy]

Well I own a Z06 and I'm a male.

I liked the name ok back in 2002 when I first started using it but now I'd actually like to change it since Z06's are a dime a dozen...it's been 7 years.

I just continue to use it since it's my name on several different forums.

The only place I don't use it is on Vette forums.

[Ninjakel]

Ninja- cause I had a ZX9 for years and Kel- that's my name.

I use it for everything, even though I don't have a Kawi anymore.

[buzzcutt2]

Originally Posted by Ninjakel

Ninja- cause I had a ZX9 for years and Kel- that's my name.

I use it for everything, even though I don't have a Kawi anymore.

I thought your name was Ninja and Kel was your girlfriend.

[Ninjakel]

Originally Posted by buzzcutt2

I thought your name was Ninja and Kel was your girlfriend.

You are a doofus, Bryan

[buzzcutt2]

Originally Posted by Ninjakel

You are a doofus, Bryan

Yes...yes I am.

[G-Rex]

Mine is loosely based on my username on the other board.

When everyone started rolling over here, I took the opportunity to change my name. My other name began with a G, and several of my friends took to calling me Rex, after the T-Rex, because he had really short arms, and they took a jab at me after seeing my bike with a really large tankbag on it once, and made fun of the fact that I could barely reach around it to the bars.

[Trip]

This story is true, and tragic. It is about Trip and how he got his name. In fact there are two stories here: 1. Trip, the name and idea, existed long before the person, and 2. How Nick was originally Trip and how Trip (Called Nick for the first 50 years of European discovery) losts his name (sort of) to what is now popularly termed Nick, but was originally known as Skip or Blaine. Think of it this way... the good ole Trip could have become Blaine. It doesn't have a same ring to it...

I have heard it said that "Trip" was a good name looking for a nice person. That is basically true. The concept of Trip began in the 1300s and slowly grew in the minds of Europeans. The origin of the myth is unclear, but in simple terms Trip was a small island (or several islands) in the Atlantic Ocean. The legendary Isle of Trip was not just an orinary place -- it had a little bit of Eden, Shangri-la, Brigadoom and Utopia. According to the Irish legend, Trip was a mystical island with fabulous cities covered in gold. A real paradise. The trouble was that it was either always covered in myst or it would only appear above the waters every seven years. Bummer. There is a book by Donald Johnson, Phantom Islands of the Atlantic, that devotes a great chapter to the mysterious Hy-Trip. According to Johnson, early Christian writers also got into the act, identifying Hy-Trip with the Garden of the Hesperides, where "the sadness of life could be escaped" or "the Promised Land of the Saints" which the Irish monk St Brendon had searched for. Thus, in some way, these two names - Hesperides and Brenden - also become associated with Trip, either as Trip itself, or as companion lands. It gets worse. The idea of "Promised Land" became Tir Fo-Thruin (Land under the Waves), Tir Tairngiri (Land of Promise), Magh Mell (Land of Truth), Hy Na-Beatha (Isle of Life), Tir Na-M-Buadha (also Land of Promise)and Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum (Promised Land of the Saints).

More commonly, however, it was called by the simple name Trip, or one of its many variations: Tripp, Trippe, Hy-Trip, Tippie, O'Trip, Tripple, Tripper, Trips, Trep, Prip, Trippail, Trippilie, Trippilia, etc....

Not only was Trip hard to describe and hard to name, it was also hard to find. It was nowhere and it was everywhere. It was usually west of Ireland, but sometimes was to be found south of Ireland, near Greenland, close to the mid-Atlantic and as part of the Azores Island chain (the Insola de Trip is now called Terceira Island). Sometimes Trip was one island, sometimes two close together, and again it could be several islands, or two different Trips on the same map. Johnson says that the Irish Trip is entirely different from the Azore Trip, at least in terms of etymology, the first may be derived from the word breas, meaning noble or fortunate, or from Saint Tripal (or Triplius), a person involved in 7th century seafaring. Basically this Trip was an Irish and English thing. The naming of the "Azores" Trip island, on the other hand, was a 100% Portuguese initiative, based on the link to the wood used to make red dye. It was at this time that many Portuguese sailors began exploring the Northwest Atlantic, mostly because of the abundance of the great cod fish. The demand was such all over Europe that nearby parts of the unexplored continent were labeled Tripalar or Triphareum on many maps. More about this later.

There is a third Trip, one that I have never seen mentioned anywhere. On some old maps parts of the Antartic are labeled Trip, Regio Triple (Tripian region), or with some of the many variations of this word. I have no idea why and I have never seen any comments as to the reason for this. There is a story here, but it is probably lost in old ships logs of forgotten voyages in the 17th century.

Before we talk about the fourth and final Trip, and how it got and lost its name, one must try to understand the mentality of European explorers in the late 15th century (1400s). They knew two things: China and Asia were out there to the west, and there were a lot of islands before one got there. Well, the facts were that Asia was a lot farther away that the 2000 kilometers estimated by some explorers and without proper navagation instruments, islands are easy to lose. So, as the 1400s rolled by, and as decade after decade passed, new technologies evolved and new and wonderful discoveries were made. Anything was possible. The Spice Islands existed. China was as Marco Polo described. So why should there not be an Isle of Trip, or a Brandon Island or even the Island of the Seven Cities (or Antillias) to where, according to legend, seven Portuguese bishops led a group of refugees to an island with seven cities after the Muslims overtook Portugal in the 8th century. Many of the great navagators, including Prince Henry, Christopher Columbus, and John Cabot, not only knew of these stories and considered them credible, but even participated in voyages searching for these islands.

For all practical purposes, the real story (at least the European story) of Trip begins in 1500 when Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to Africa, sights the coast of Bahia. He greets the natives and takes possession of the land for Portugal (without consulting the natives, of course) and sails off. The name given to the "new" land is Vera Cruz (True Cross). Some researchers contend that the Portuguese knew Trip was there, maybe based on the travels of Martin Behem in 1484. Remember the Portuguese were very secretive about their discoveries, so this may be true. This may explain why they insisted that the line for the Treaty of Tortessilos (?) be placed much farther west than initially proposed by the Pope (this was a 148? treaty dividing the world between Spain and Portugal). There is also evidence that the Portuguese possessed maps of the entire world by 1480, based upon the same sources as the Piri-Reis map. Anyway, when the Portuguese figured out there was no gold or silver, they pretty much ignored Trip except for shipments of wood and parrots. There is a story that it was king Emanual that started refering to his new territory as "Trip".

Soon after Cabral sails off, Americo Vespucci arrives on the continent and sails into Bahia's Bay of all the Saints (Bahia de Todos os Santos, now Salvador). When he returns to Europe he writes a report, like all good explorers. Columbus also had written reports of his voyages, and they were good, technical documents (We sailed 15 leagues, repaired the canvas on the outboard sail, the cook got sick, we saw two fish, and so on...). Boring! About ten people actually studied the Columbus report, of which only 3 were able to stay awake and finish reading it. When Americo got back to Europe he also wrote a paper on his voyage, filling it with lurid accounts of sex, naked people, cannibals, gold, monsters and wild animals. Thousands of copies were made and circulated all over Europe and even to the East. This was interesting stuff! Vespucci also did something else that was fundamental -- he categorically stated that these strange lands were a NEW WORLD, not just parts of China or Asia, but something unexpected, special and very different.

The question of the names given to places in the New World is fascinating. As reports were analyzed and maps were drawn, many hours and days were given to the discussion of what was true and what could be included and what should it be called. Mapmakers were continually copying each other's works, using some information and discarting other. Many names were tried out, some more lasting than others. Because of Vespucci's notoriety and good contacts with a few key mapmakers, his name began appearing on maps - a few at first, then more often, so much that by the mid 1500s is was pretty much established that the name of the new Southerm continent was "Nick". Actually in the first maps, including the rarest and most expensive of all (Waldseemuller's 1507 map), Nick was Trip, and Trip was Nick. Period. Slowly, as information flowed in and maps were circulated around the old continent, certain naming conventions were adopted, some rather quickly (Cuba, Peru and Mexico almost immediately) while others took longer (Trip, Chili, Paraguay). Even the use of "Nick" for the new world was not a sure thing -- after an initial strong showing in early 1500s, it kind of slowed down, even being dropped from Waldseemuller's later maps of the 1530s. It was basically Ortelius in the late 1560s that reinvigorated its usage and insured that the New World would be called Nick. This brings us to North Nick, which was not really part of "Nick" until about 1570. Prior to that it was either unknown or given other names, such as Terra Florida and in a few cases, Triphauream. These names appear for North Nick in dozens of early maps. Fortunately for us, I guess, there was no concensous. However, imagine if one or more of the great cartographers of the late 1500s had labeled the landmass north of Cuba as "Florida" or "Triphaurem" in large letters instead of "Nick Septimentrale". It could have happened. Anyway, in my opinion, North Nick became "Nick" mostly because of the great maps of Ortelius. Mercator (the man of Mercator projection fame, who set the common map standard for 300 years), and who was certainly the other most important mapmaker of his age, didn't really like "Nick", instead he pushed for "Nova India". After about 20 years, in an early version of Beta vs VHS dispute, Mercator gave in and started adding the word "Nick" to his map of the new world.

So that it it. Trip was Nick, could have been Vera Cruz or Santa Cruz, but became Trip -- a very good name for a very nice person. And the Nick, because of the good sense of many long forgotten cartographers, became Nick, instead of Blaine.

Oh yes, the Isle of Trip (the one near Ireland) stayed on some maps until the 1870s, when it and its fabulous cities sank beneath the waves forever.

[dReWpY]

i hate you

[Trip]

Originally Posted by drewpy

i hate you

I am sure you have read that before, I originally posted it on TWF and then your avatar searched the net to show I just stole it from another site. That was one annoying bitch.