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What’s in a Name?
By Mike | May 13, 2008
I’ve been hollered at about my byline again. “Is it Mike or Michael? Pick one!”
Truth be told, I like having Michael on my prose work, and Mike on my comics. Those names just seem to fit the respective fields. However, most people call me Mike, and of course my main domain name is mikeoliveri.com, so readers, editors and publishers tend to think of me as Mike. More than once I’ve had to correct a byline in a proof copy, which sometimes prompts said hollering.
The only reason I don’t have michaeloliveri.com is another guy beat me to it. An artist, no less, with gallery showings and everything, so it’s not like the domain name is just sitting there. Also, mikeoliveri.com was a Christmas gift from John way back when, and I’ve just kept it going. I did buy michaeloliveri.info and michael-oliveri.com a couple years back, but I didn’t want to muddle things further if people ended up at michaeloliveri.com while trying to remember the hyphen or the .info. On the Google front, the artist Oliveri and I are deadlocked for the first page when searching for “michael oliveri”. Search for “mike oliveri”, however, and I’ve pretty much got him licked. Our respective domain names are at the 1 and 2 spot of both pages, and probably always will be.
So the question becomes, what do you folks think? Should I just shift my entire byline over to Mike Oliveri and use it on the prose from now on? Or does Michael sound better? Is it really as confusing as some people fear?
May 13th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I like Mike.
Sounds like a good campaign slogan, too. {wicked grin}
Seriously, Michael is more formal, and I think your audience would relate more to a Mike than a Michael.
My audience doesn’t have a choice. I’m just John.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Yeah, Johns have it easy. And we’ve already got a Geoff and a Brian.
Maybe I’ll just change my name to Horace.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Go with Mike.