Getting a handle on a handle

Before I make an honest to goodness post, I think a short explanation of my pseudonym may be in order. I have seen through the years many people find my handle, abbywill, to be somewhat feminine, and, indeed, when only using the name I have been mistaken for being female more than once. One might then ask, why did I choose it and why do I still use it if it will possibly lead to unintended confusion? Well, as far for why I still use it, I have used the name for over a decade and I have become so attached to it that I can't really bear to forgo it for a new handle. It has become something of an identifying feature for me; Something that I like and that I find to be unique. But why did I choose it in the first place?
Well, that goes back to the time that I first ventured on the internet, almost 15 years ago, if memory serves me. I realized that, for several things I was exploring, I needed a handle. I wanted to remain as anonymous as possible, and I figured a good method for doing that would be to choose a name that was neither masculine nor feminine. I also realized, though, that doing that would be challenging since it is often hard to discern the subtle character of words. I decided that my best option would be to take a masculine name and combine it with a feminine one and hope that the result would be neither. I had a story that I was working on at that time with two main characters, a brother and sister, named William and Abigale. I thought that was as good a place to start as any, so I decided to combine those two names, and abbywill seemed to flow much more nicely that willabby.
It was much later that I realized that, since the feminine name came first, many who read the name thought of it as being feminine. I had already been using the name for some time before I came to this realization, and I had already become kind of stuck on it, so it became stuck on me, you might say. Looking back, I find it ironic that my attempt to create a name lacking in gender apparently lead to a name that many find quite gender specific. It was something of a first experiment, though, and even though it might have lead to unintended results, it has taught me a great deal about what characteristics people associate with names. This is a topic which I find of particular interest, and one in which I might end up writing a few of my thoughts on in the not too distant future (somewhere in time and space).

Best,
abbywill