Took me a bit to see that. Its not just how your peers view you it’s the community in general which includes the programs that your supposed to be working with.

Nice post Greg!

Unknown: Eyvindur is a pretty damn cool name. I can’t say I’m ever going to bump in to another Eyvindur Tryggvi in my lifetime. I do so your point though. I think that “non-English” names connote communication problems, which could be the reason behind initial trust issues.

Either way I believe that over time your true value shines through, regardless of how unique your name is.

It reminded me of how having a nich or name that is non-English can make it more difficult to build that trust with other webmasters, simply because they don’t understand it, and as a result have a hard time remembering it, in much the same way that a lot of people have a hard time remembering phone numbers but not names – Names make sense, phone numbers “don’t”.

For a long time I used my middle name as my nick, and actually got a decent good reputation on a couple of small poker forums – Unfortunately it is difficult to pronounce in English, which made it difficult for many people to remember it. Just take a look at these two names “Greg Walker” and “Eyvindur Tryggvi”. Unless you are from Iceland, you would probably start recognizing Greg long before Eyvindur.

While it certainly is possible to build a brand around a “weird” name or nickname, it will make the beginning more difficult, since the odds are stacked against you. There are people who have build very good reputations using names and nicks that are pretty weird, but most of them tend to be remarkable in one way or another.