Etymology (origins of Teoalida name)

Teoalida is NOT my birth name, it was originally… just one of the 50+ strange names I invented by me to NOT resemble any real names, when I was 6 years old. Example of other names: Tenzana, Tenzausup, Tarromen, Stagmela, Stangina, Saugrilild, Haborii, Hancoare, Fediuect, etc (see more in artwork from childhood).

Once I began school at 7 I started writing humorous stories in the form of dialogues with about 10 animal characters from the 50+ invented names, some stories were inspired from what happened in my school, conflicts and pranks made by my schoolmates, etc. My friends asked me what are these names, I liked how Teoalida sounded and it became most used name in my stories, for a leader, a highly educated person, who solve any conflicts, like our female teacher. There was also a male Teoalid.

Over years my parents created a negative connotation of my real name, by making remarks like “only (my real name) is stupid enough to do this”. Due to this reason at 11 years I started hating using my real name, and see myself (a male) as Teoalida character from my stories, and signed all my works with Teoalida name.

When I connected to neighborhood LAN in 2004 and internet, my parents told me to never disclose real name online, so I was logging in LAN chatroom with Teoalida name, I made an email address with Teoalida name, I watermarked all my drawings as Made by Teoalida, etc. Sometimes in business is required the real name, but probably they are against me doing any kind of business.

I did a Google search and surprisingly, were 0 results for Teoalida keyword. In 2008 the only results were from the forum of my LAN. Teoalida name was unique and gave me an advantage of building my online personality, while searching my real name in Google showed thousands results so may have been difficult for people to find me, and was also hard to spell for foreigners. But in foreign websites, forums and games I played, I registered with generic english words like Somebody or Future (to prevent my parents or anyone else tracking my activity on internet).

When I made this website in 2009, I “launched” Teoalida name/brand worldwide. Some people said that was better to use real name in business and web domain name, but if I started as Teoalida, to continue this way. What is the problem of using a business name different than real name? Actually I want to adopt Teoalida as legal name some day.

Some negative effects happens from using same name for business and for local community. In the following years I got unwanted popularity among neighborhood bad guys, low-educated people who love bullying others for no reason, leaving rude comments on my Facebook page, if my customers see them may wrongly think that are left by unhappy customers, when actually they are not customers but teenagers who love bullying. I don’t like having such bad friends in my business name.

Since I am now known internationally, I have seen people from various countries who thinks that I am female and people from other countries who thinks that I am male, also people who cannot write Teoalida name correctly. I get sometimes emails addressing me as Teo Alida, TeoLida or TeoaLinda. WRONG! It should be spell Te-oa-li-da.

Do you have any suggestions?