Back in the early-00s, some pre-Ebaum's unsourced funny images website had a photo of a misspelled road sign for Phoenix, AZ. I used “Phenoix” as the name for my first fursona, a brown dragon. “Phenokage” came from a portmanteau of “Phenoix” and “Hitokage,” the Japanese name for Charmander. I still have that IRC mentality where one’s handle and one’s name are two different things, so “phenokage” has stuck with me, even through all the iterations my online identity has taken on since.
“Clover” was a name I picked out of a hat for a red panda character when I needed a non-mythological self-insert for a slice-of-life comic @aviyinglet was doing, back in the late-00s when we’d just started dating. “Arizona” came from “Benson, AZ,” the opening theme from John Carpenter’s Dark Star. And through a combination of figuring out I was trans and a werewolf and therian (in that order), Clover (now a werewolf) is just me and “Clover” is just my name now.
