When I was a teenager we had a group of computer nerds.
In the heyday, we would get together 2-∞ times a month, everyone would bring their computer and we would network them together and play games.
This is called a LAN party, LAN standing for Local Area Network.
We were called the LANarchists.
When you play games or go online, you are identified by a handle, a name.
Pay attention to the handle-less Joey in the movie Hackers. You’re nothing without a handle!
I had used several handles in my doings previous to Landor.
At one point my friend Andrew lived with me.
My name was also Andrew.
One bright day in the middle of the night, Andrew was leaning back in his chair looking through the dictionary. He opened to a page and became Ardor.
AssNeck would come over and call us Andor and Ardor. I can see him walking down the hall towards our room and saying our names.
I must have liked it because at some point noticed I could put an L in front of it and
became LANdor, a LANarchist.
So all my friends called me Landor.
When I moved to Savannah, GA, I told people my name was Landor.
The only people who called me Andrew were my girlfriend, who thought it was silly, and her friends.
In Charleston, SC, when I started working at Alliance Software, my username got set up relative to Andrew, so the Boss Man had a hard time remembering what to call me and said he wasn’t going to try. But every once in a while he’d call me Landor.
Around this time I came to think about this name situation, and I realized this name means something. Upon hearing the name, people are amazed. Everyone had a different interpretation, usually mystical in nature if it wasn’t Lando Calrissian.
I realized I am mystical in nature. I seek after these things. I inspire these things in others.
At the same time, I was formally introduced to feminism, which establishes language for much that is important to me.
Andrew means “Bold, Manly.”
While I am currently resonating at a masculine frequency and exhibiting masculine qualities, I’ve never really felt supremely manly or whatever that seems to be. I do not conform to or identify with the gender binary.
After working with him for 1.5 years, Alliance Boss Man, who had also chosen his name, told me that if I wanted him to call me Landor, then I’d have to get serious about it: if my mom would call me Landor, then he would too. It was about a month before I was going to a family reunion to see people I hadn’t seen for ~6-8 years.
At that family reunion, I shared with my family the Story of Landor, much as I am here now. They still struggle with 20 years of Andrew-calling, but they now mostly call me Landor.
My sister just sent out an updated family contact list in preparation for this year’s family reunion, and I am listed as Landor.
So, we start at Andrew, bring in the Andor inspired by friendship and love, LAN for its interconnectedness, and we arrive at a name free of enforced polarity, infused with the magic of the eternal somethingorother.
