Foreigners always pronounce my name as mikey, so I thought I’d save them the trouble. Somebody once posted a fragment of a film (road trip? Euro trip?) that was a perfect example, but I can’t seem to find it.

Another reason is that, before I came to steemit, I earned good money through marketing. I didn’t pay taxes, so at one point I decided it wasn’t safe to keep
On using my own name, so I switched to a name that was very common in Belgium. My real name is Mieke, so Mike wasn’t very far from the truth, but far enough to keep the IRS off my back.
In the pretty sexist world of marketing, it’s always an advantage if people think you’re a guy. Since I origlnally signed up for SteemIt to promote my biz, I kept the name :0)