Why mh11wi Anyways?
You may have been wondering why my username is "mh11wi". And while the answer in itself is not particularly exciting, it does mirror one of the hardest parts of Computer Science: naming things. Because we've all probably encountered some legacy code that is not immediately readable. Something that made sense at the time, but whose context has been lost. So today I thought I would share the meaning behind these characters, and how they have grown into my 'brand'.
A Little History
I originally created this account to contribute to the Caribou Contests private repository when I was working for my professor at Brock University (you can read more on how this came about in my first blog post). Like the other students working for Caribou at the time, I used my Brock login — mh11wi — to sign into Caribou. And so for consistency, I decided to use the same username on GitHub.
Did I create my own Brock login? No. It was automatically generated for me when I first became a student. The naming convention seems to be as follows:
- mh — my first and last initials,
- 11 — the year the account was created (2011),
- wi — two random letters to guarantee uniqueness in their system.
That's really all there is to it. No deeper meaning; but we are definitely going to ignore the fact that 2011 was over a decade ago now.
So Why Not Change It?
After finishing school and my time with Caribou, I wanted to create a professional presence online. Namely, a portfolio to share my work and other experiences. And that is how I learned about GitHub Pages! I considered changing my username at this time, knowing mh11wi would become the subdomain of my website. But I honestly couldn't think of anything better — especially since what I wanted was a username I could use across different accounts and profiles that A) is short and concise, B) wouldn't already be taken, and C) still representative of myself.
Surprisingly, "Madeleine Hill" is more common of name than you'd think. No really, Google it! On many platforms, usernames like "mhill" and "hillm", or even "MadeleineHill" and "madeleine_hill" already exist. And I didn't want to just tack on a bunch of numbers to the end, as it would make it harder to stay consistent and memorable.
On the other hand, it's probably for the best, because frankly, my name gets misspelled a lot. More often than not I'm called "Madeline" by mistake. I've learned that if somebody misspells or mispronounces your name, it's better to correct them right away, even if it feels a little awkward. Lately I've been trying to avoid the issue by joking that my name is like the cake, not the cartoon as an icebreaker. Which works well in person, but a computer can't do the same in an open search.
So while "mh11wi" does seem a little unconventional, it has served me well over the years. At some point I've even begun reading it as a whole word (mill-wee) rather than individual characters. Please feel free to do the same if it helps!