desk diary - How I Came Up With My Pen Name
sharing briefly the origin story and thought process behind my pen name
We all know most create a pen name to hide their real name and to have a sense of anonymity when sharing their work publicly. Some have multiple pen names for fun. And most of you who follow me know that my name is Jasveen Marie Kaur (Core) and I typically go by Jazz or Jazz Marie. Some have said “JMK” from time to time.
When I initially started writing, I tried publishing a few things under my real name, however, this name is super common — if you do a Google search for Jasveen Kaur. My grandparents on my dad’s side helped come up with my name and my mom came up with the middle. It was also brought up quite a few times over the years lol that I should consider legally changing my name to something else (not to my pen name but other names were brought up).
I tried using just my real name for a while but didn’t see any eBook sales until I tried the pen name Meeli Caston which didn’t feel right and then later switched to Vevna Forrow (VFORROW) sometime in 2013. Originally, I had as I mentioned earlier an incomplete scrambled childhood dark comedy YA concept series idea called Cryptic Hats. I thought about various names of European origin for characters in that YA story idea which is why I had looked at a bunch of Old English names, historical locations, and even plots of land names back then. I ended up jotting down a list of possible names.
I think Vevina is a name too which I can’t recall may be of Irish or Scottish origins I had come across. People often say or write Verna Forrow with an “r” accidentally. Plus, I almost chose Veena instead of Vevna by the way.
There was also a memorable movie I watched in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia while visiting my grandparents when I was younger called Kisna: The Warrior Poet (2005) which doesn’t focus on poetry at all, rather it’s a romantic tale that has a rather tragic ending in my opinion. Songs can be poetic in nature though. But anyway, that led to me settling on the ”nuh” or “na” in Vevna. That is not my favorite Bollywood movie though, my fave is Hum Tum (2004).
Then somewhere down the road I was thinking about Trapdoor burrowing spiders from the movie Eight Legged Freaks (2002) and thought about how “burrow” ended in “row.” I was examining end rhymes like “sorrow” and “tomorrow”, therefore Forrow was chosen. Additionally, I saw Farrow in an online name database and switched the “a” to an “o.” I do have another pen name besides my primary, but have yet to heavily use it. Yeah, so that’s basically how I came up with it in my mind I guess (not in that order but my reasoning and thought process).
— VFORROW (Jazz Marie Kaur)
MOVIE I WATCHED RECENTLY
Yesterday (2019) on Amazon Prime: My VFORROW Rating 3.2 out of 5.
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I've gone through also a complicated journey with what name to use.
My first few tries did not work well and ultimately I felt it was best to just go with my first name. Among the issues I faced, which was the initial two pen names I chose turned out to be the same name as another poet on the exact same trajectory as me and I didn't want to have our work confused. I've thought about appending something at the end to distinguish my work now from other's named River but I've held back because I don't want to run into the problem of how to connect my work all together in ever rotating change of last names unless I really settle on a permanent one.
Its really interesting to see the process that others use to select their public facing name and to see what people have in common and are different (I would love to read how others did it in the comments as well)