What's in a name? A derby girl by any other name would smell as gross

I've always been Rosie the Retaliator- yes, there are 100s of Rosies, but my grandma actually was a Rosie and worked on planes during World War 2.

In the meantime, I wish I could find someone who would become Brick Housewife. I just think it's funny and comes with a theme song and tagline pre-made.

Some people have said they think it would make the owner sound subservient to her husband. I guess since I'm definitely NOT in that position it never occurred to me. I think it's sassy.

This reminds me of an earlier column:
http://www.derbylife.com/articles/2011/09/derby_names_not_ready_prime_time

I had been around derby for a couple of years before I started announcing. Since my better half is official Penny Whistler, people were already referring to me as Mr Whistler anyway, and since I had the T Shirts already, stuck with it. But there was a brief period where I considered using Guided By Vices - combining my love of, well, vices, and my favorite band, Guided By Voices. But sure enough, an enterprising skater had already scooped it, so Mr Whistler I stayed.

But any of you are welcome to use Curtis E. Flush, the result of some afterparty brainstorming.

Derby names always make me smile. I chose mine after a two week debate with my inner skater and tried such ones as 'Roberto Guerrera' , 'Rob'N Dishood', and decided on Trip Ur'Mama because my friends were callin me Trip for awhile after finding out that i was the third generation of Robert's in my family. Plus it rolled off the tongue nicely :P
My team wanted to call me the 'Ticket Master' during drills the girls always yelled out ticket, knees, toes, in order to keep in proper derby form. And one of them for some reason used to like to stare at my moobies, and told me they looked like pastries...needless to say, her and i came up with the "Pastry Ref" and if i ever have to change my name...i'm going with that one.

It took me forever to come up with a derby name when I started skating 2 years ago. When I was first thinking of names I really REALLY wanted a name that included my real first name, Greta. After much thought and several disappointing trips to twoevils I ended up settling on Pandora's Squeezebox. I didn't love it at first but now I've sort of developed a special person around my derby name and there are so many jokes related to it with my team mates. I had come to adore my derby name. That is until just a few weeks ago when my boyfriend finally came up with the perfect, not taken derby name that makes use of my real name and I'm seriously considering changing it. Person Non Greta. What do you think?

When I first became scrimmage-eligible, I rushed myself into picking a name so I could put in on my shirt before my first scrimmage. (I didn't realize I only had to have a number and no one would care if I waited on the name.) I got permission from the friend who owns the copyright to a name I was excited about, and skated as Choo-Choo Bear for about 8 months. But it's really cutesy, and I got tired of explaining the reference, and I started getting mixed up with another player in our league, because the nicknames "Choo" and "Chew" sound the same.

So I changed it to Criminal Wrecker. I think it was the second name I ever came up with (the first was Sandra Bollocks), and even with an ever-growing list of awesome ideas, it's still my favorite. I tell people my name and they laugh immediately. I felt guilty changing away from CCB because my friend was so excited that I was using it, but I make the right decision for me. I lurve my name now.

When I first started skating, I had no other nickname to fall back on other than 'GlitterTits' an unfortunate nickname I had earned after years of bellydancing. My league had a problem with it and finally told me to change it, and at the time I was miffed that they could be such prudes and have such an issue with 'TITS' since we all have them, but in the end I guess I'm thankful that they had common sense when I obviously did not. Of course depression over actually having to spend time and effort into picking a name set in, as all the ones I picked were taken by skaters clear across the globe...but all that quickly dissipated when it suddenly struck me that I realized that I had been called another name too over the years, both as an insult and as a compliment, and thus 'Wicked Blonde' was born. Sure, it makes a lot more sense back east, and I get a lot of laughs from it, but since moving out west for 6 months and skating with a league out there, it's obvious that no one gets it. But that's ok with me, since it still works, it just has totally different meaning out here!

Fun article, Blockodile. (I think I remember Heartbreak Scorsese!) Everything I thought of with any degree of cleverness that actually fit my personality was taken when I started derby (and that was in 2009!). I was so tired of even thinking about it by the time my then-boyfriend suggested my name that I was willing to accept anything decent, and I did recall tables with screeds against animal testing and vivisection at the punk shows I attended as a youth. Vivi Section also kind of sounded like a real name and, most importantly, wasn't taken. But nobody gets it unless you hand them a dictionary — perhaps the only aspect of it that relates to my personality, which would have been better served by a literary reference. My teammate Crash Menagerie, who is a biologist, and I used to joke about switching names. But it's just too late. There's a point at which it seems the name just becomes a part of you and there's no turning back.