So pretty soon I’ll be starting on the air at the radio station where I work. Up until this point, I’d been planning to use my real name on the air, but because others have told me that’s probably not a good idea and because my real name happens to be really, really close to another already in use by someone at our station, I’m now faced with the task of coming up with a good on-air alias.
My requirements are simple- nothing obscene and nothing too corny. Something that sounds normal but is pretty clever regardless would be preferred.
I leave my fate in the able hands of you clever, clever dopers.
Are you a man or a woman? Your gender will somewhat constrain your choice, I think.
You could pick some wacked-out name from a P.G. Wodehouse novel or a Monty Python bit. Think Pongo Twistleton-Twistleton, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, or Adrian Wapcaplet.
I remember that there was a thread about ridiculous upper-class English names on this here SDMB a while back. I bet you could search for it and find some good options.
You could also name yourself after a Firesign Theatre character, especially one of the guys who works at Radio Now, in Fun Fun Town.
You could pick a funny-sounding scientific word as your last name. Think “Nematode,” or “Quercus.”
Uh, how bout some kind of joke-grenade type thing? Like:
Paul Bearer
Doug A. Grave
Lee Ving
Stan Din
Nick Atine
Buzz Craven (local guy here)
Rick Shaw
Matt Shott
Rick O’shea
Bill Ding
Joe Mama (sorry, had to)
Ben Dover
Mel Anoma
Roy Al’ Sweet
John Clogger
Ollie Oxenfree
Pete Bog
Tom E. Gunn
Chris Tall
Adam Shame
Donny Brook
Rich Loner
Goliath Killer
Most of these are lame, but a few are kinda funny (a few have been used before also), if you decide to use one, let me know. If you were a girl, I’d have lots more.
What’s your shtick? Goofball? Cool? Too Hip for Words? Pandering to the teenyboppers?
Here’s some safe, mildly hip names:
Eliott Michaels
Cameron Davis
Johnny Five (you could just go by ‘Fiver’ when you’re feeling saucy)
Brett Wilson
Martin Taylor / Taylor Martin (especially if you play guitar)
Pick a first or last name that you like. Then choose the other name based on a matching vowel sound.
For example, if you choose the first name Kalen (pronounced with a long a), then a good match would would be Gray – also pronounced with a long a. You could even spell it G-R-E-Y as long as you kept the long a sound.
It doesn’t matter what the vowel sound is; just match it in your first and last name.
Hehe - anyone remember the Thunderbirds episode where they had to rescue a DJ of exactly that name? (May have been Captain Scarlet/Joe 90/Fireball XL5)
Well, my friend and I once had a radio show. It was just at the college radio station, but we had fun with it anyways. late night, 11-2 AM, but we still got callers cause we were so wacky! Anyways, his name was Scott, so his “on air” name was DJ Skizzle. I recommend something like that for oyu.
How about DJ Dizzle? DJ Da-Vizzle? Davy D? DJ Davy? DJ Davy D? Wavy-Davy?
Picker has the idea. You’ve got to create a persona, and then name it appropriately. Those wacky Birt upper-crust names would be great, if you were DJing a stuffy Classics station.
Don’t think of it as on-air name for you. Think of the job as you performing an act like in a play, and the character’s name is what we’re after. But we have to have the character’s act first. What is that person like? Young? Old? Old, but young at heart? Political or Apolitical? Controversial? If not, how will you avoid being boring (aka the Kiss of Death)? Not to say that only controversy is non-boring, but it’s the easy way out, as a casual scan of the airwaves will show.
In addition to knowing what the character is like, we need to know what he does. Does he read a lot of ads, or just introduce tunes? Does he read the news too? “DJ Dizzle” miight be fine for introducing tunes, but notso-hotso for reporting on the latest political outrage. On one of my morning drive stations, the weather reader is “John Weatherby”. Yeah sure that’s his name. But I can remember his name & none of the other stations’ weather readers.
Throw us a bone here & we’ll come up with some better ideas.
