What's in a Name? – Why I chose Dennis Bacchus as an Alias
Nomen est omen?
Not necessarily, but in my case it's one half of the truth.
Dennis Bacchus has been my pseudonym on other websites for many years. For a lucky one, who has been on the Glorious Interwebs since 1995, the number of nicknames I went and still go by has accumulated. You surely know your own variants of the story.
As of today and like I mentioned in my introduceyourself, I primarily use the names Dennis Bacchus, Dennis Steppenwolf and David V. Burden. Leon Schwarz is another AKA I published under.
Dennis Bacchus is comprised of my real first name and the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Dionysus.
Dennis in itself derives from Dionysus/Dionisius (some sources claiming, the latter meaning "blessed by Dionysus").
So strictly, my name reads Dionys(i)us Bacchus. Oh well. :D
I chose Bacchus, because of its intriguing origin: I am interested in ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Northern mythologies – as he is, argued, a thriceborn (half) god of wine, plays (many theatres were built in his name), ecstasy and pleasure.
To honour the entity, Bacchanalia were held in which the participants, called maenads or bacchant(e)s, could shed their sorrows and worries.
As an existentialist I believe in building your own purpose of life and looking for and then enjoying its beauty in its great and/or tiny aspects. I don't ignore the terrible and morbid sides and our fragility in this chaotic cosmos. I just choose to live a life that's making sense in the macro, despite of its absurdity in the greater picture. The further you zoom in, the more you realize what matters.
Summed up, pleasure and beauty are ideas I can relate to, as they make life bearable, and more so enjoyable. Often, it is not even about what you value as beautiful. It is about favoring something at all. To me, indifference is a slow mental death – carving you out from the inside.
This might sound arrogant to some, but I don't see myself as god-chosen or in the company of gods, I am just choosing one side of life over the other.
In fact, when I registered on Steemit, "Dennis Steppenwolf" was my first choice (out of my nothing short of admiration for Hesse's Steppenwolf), but the name was too long. So I went with Bacchus once again.
A bonus for your next personal celebration to raise a cup of wine (or your favorite beverage) to:
This post is inspired by and part of @steemitachievers' writing contest.
More about Dionysus/Bacchus, other sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dionysus
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bacchanalia
https://mythology.stackexchange.com/questions/2180/why-was-dionysus-a-dying-and-rising-god-called-thrice-born
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/steppenwolf/about-steppenwolf
Image credits:
Pixabay – MrsBrown
Pixabay – XPLATOON
Hello, I'm another Dennis Bacchus, an artist-painter and the founder of dennisbacchus.com. Do you have any idea how to minimize the confusion about two completely different Dennises Bacchuses? I have used that alias for about 20 years and signed an ungodly amount of art as Dennis Bacchus.