I’ve seen various people mention the names of their Glowforges, and thought it might be great to gather the names people are using here! (There’s a separate thread about unused names for ideas if you don’t have one.) If there’s a story behind it, post that too.
After some debates with the kids, we named our GF the Maxim 59. It’s from the “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries” in Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary comic universe. Maxim 59 states, “Two wrongs is probably not going to be enough,” which is appropriate given how much experimentation and “corrections” we think we’ll be doing!
Other contenders were:
Maxim 1 (“Pillage, then burn” but we don’t want to burn things with the GF)
I Haz a Lazor (The 9 year old loved this.)
Maxim 34 (“If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun”)
Death Floof (nickname for a polar bear; the kids like the “death” association)
Laserus Long, in honor of the Heinlein character Lazarus Long—the protagonist in Time Enough For Love and the single character who spans all of his Future Histories stories timeline
In our Starfinder (role-playing) game, one of the players has a robot drone which follows his commands, and it is armed with a laser gun. It has killed more enemies than the player characters have with that gun.
So when I was looking for a name for my Glowforge, someone from that group suggested the name of the drone.
I have no idea sparks are involved or not, but it was the only name I could remember when I set it up. My car is Leaf Erikson, because he is a nissan leaf. And my vacuum is Furlock Holmes, because animal fur is his lot in life.
Between my affection for the Hellraiser franchise and my ongoing fixation on the box-like Menger sponge fractal, I pretty quickly settled on Lemarchand.
My PRU was Orodurin, a take-off on Orodruin which was the other name for Mount Doom in LOTR - the place the Rings were forged and where the One Ring was destroyed. The spelling difference is because mine isn’t evil. I created a plaque for it and used a drawing of Mount Rainier based on the obverse of the Washington state quarter. I figured it was suitable as the birthplace of my PRU (at least metaphorically) since Seattle is in its shadow. I included Elvish Script that I’m leaving up to the staff to translate (yes, it’s in the box the PRU is going back in)
My new Pro is called TANSTAAFL - also a Heinlein reference and just generally all round good advice.
Mine is “UrForge”, obviously an unoriginal take on my user name. Where did that name come from? I am amused to report that I have absolutely no idea. I’ve used it in a few places for a number of years but no memory of why I started.
Current theory: I will be doing some time-traveling at some point and will be visiting old me for a chat and to find some stuff I’ve lost. While there I’ll suggest UrJac to him/me. Then (to protect the space-time continuum), I’ll flashy-thing him/me, like in Men-In-Black.
This theory fits the facts at hand so I’m sure that’s what happened/happens.
The PRU was ForgeAhead, the Pro was Titan Arum (proper name for the Corpse Flower). But those two left me after taking all of my best years. So rather than become emotionally invested again the newest is CJT-483. Won’t bother renaming.