Name, a Name, What's in a Name?

Dangerous Delilah! I love my name and it matches me so well. To me the word, dangerous, evokes a sense of mystery, excitement, daring, and boldness. Delilah is a temptress from the Hebrew bible, Samson loved Delilah and she betrayed him for power and money.  Now, I'm not one to betray a loved one! I just liked the name and it fit well with dangerous.

When I needed a stage name I first picked the name Darla Danger.  I had picked the name from a name game that was passed around on non other than Myspace. I thought it was cute and vintage. But non of my friends liked it. NEXT! One drunken night my good friends a Russian and a Hispanic put together the name Rubia Blondinka, the words meant blonde in Spanish and blonde in Russian, we thought we were quite cleaver since I'm a blonde. I took my new name to burlesque class and everyone thought it was a little confusing and thought it might be hard for the MC's to read. NEXT! Then one day with my sister we came up with Dangerous Delilah. Perfect!

Recently, I was helping a friend come up with a new name and it was fun. She has a french last name so we started with fun french sounding names like Fifi la Muff, hehe!! Then we moved on to her personality and what she would like to portray as her character, she is a very feisty lady so we were playing off that, but nothing was fitting. Then we went off on a tangent on her features, she has very beautiful large eyes that make her look like a little doll, very innocent. I came up with the most amazing name....Innocent Until! Great don't ya think? Some one can use it if they want too!  In the end she didn't pick a name and never needed one, but this is how you can go about choosing a stage name. Just play off words, your personality, your favorite feature.

In  Jo Boobs workbook she suggests picking the name of a cheese and a flower, Brie Rose? Not bad! Or you can list all of your favorite words and slowly put them all together matching them until you find ones you like. The fun thing with a Burlesque name is it doesn't have to have two words to it, it can be any combo, any play on words, it can be a favorite food or a tribute to a legendary figure. The main thing is not to stress out about it and be unique. And you can always change your name.

After you've got an idea of what name you want, you must google it. Its very important not to pick another persons name. When I told my name to my instructor Bombshell Betty http://www.bombshellbetty.net/ , she told me there was a local performer with the name Delilah just for my own information. At first this didn't bother me as I was only planning to perform a few times, but as I continued to perform it did start to worry me. Would this other performer get mad? Would people confuse us? So I got in touch with the stunning Ava Garter http://www.avagarter.com/ (more on her another time) She told me something that made a lot of sense. That a person can't have total claim to a name. In her case she was saying 'there are so many Ava's out there'. She also made the point that you should just be the best Delilah you can be and that will differentiate you from the other performer. It helps too that I look nothing like Delilah. After this conversation I felt much better. What I'm trying to get at is do your research and if you want to use a name that is common, like Cherry, be ready for others to have it too or change yours.

Picking a name can be such a fun thing to do and when you find the right one, it will fit you like a satin glove.

xo
Dangerous Delilah