I Never Kid About My Work

Jeff Wills

is generally more friendly and easier to remember than

Jeffrey Wills

which reminds me of my mother and my day job, unlike

Jeffrey Allen Wills

which reminds me solely of my mother, at particular times of distress.

Jeffrey A. Wills

was what I used to designate my writing, until I realized it didn't really matter.

Allen

is what I went by for a whole year in elementary school, thinking

Jeffrey

, which means roughly "bringer of peace" (though it's descended from

God-a-Feared

Godfrey

and

Geoffrey

) and

Jeff

-- which presumably means the same, only less so -- were somehow childish.

Wills

is used by itself in sarcasm and in gym classes, which are not mutually exclusive concepts.

J. A. Wills

is what I use on my return-address labels, because it's distinguished and mysterious. I never use

J. Allen Wills

because that's just pretentious and wrong.

J. Wills

isn't so much, but I don't really use it anyway.

J.A.W.

, as was pointed out to me for the first time by a woman (Ms. Rice) who worked in my kindergarten, is an acronym that spells something, which is rad.

Jeffrey

also tends to imply a certain intimacy, and often gets used by folks trying to be more formal, or who like playing status games, or who don't actually know me. I've had many nicknames based on my given name:

Jeffy

Jeffy-Poo

Jeffe

("Hef-feh," or "chief")

J-etc.

(dawg, bone, luv...); just as I've had quite a few with nothing at all to do with my actual name:

Sukeu

Bruce

Bats

Spoonman

Nuit

Nicknames are casually intimate things, at turns silly and profound, and I dig them. I was very nearly

Grant Allen Wills, Jr.

and think that might have been okay. I could be a Grant.

That's enough of that, I think. This whole thing is actually a bit of an experiment to see if/how it influences web searches for my name in the coming months. When I want to Google myself (not that I do that over-much, mind) I have to enter '"Jeff Wills'+actor" or some such, lest I get a stream of Willsians accomplished in other fields. If I've got this right, technically my name being all over one entry of the 'blog in different forms shouldn't do much, however the more people click on the link to here, the more prominent my standing. So it stands to reason that having an entry with different forms of "Jeff Wills" all over it should, ah, make the...thing...do that thing, where it...erm.... Yeah. I got nothing.

Names are cool.