The Legend of Prince's Special Custom-Font Symbol Floppy Disks (2016)
13 comments
·June 5, 2025frmersdog
Needs a (2016).
Because of my age, Prince was not "Prince" for much of my childhood; I was introduced to him as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" and just assumed that that was all we'd ever call him in the future.
Renaming oneself is surely not any new phenomenon, but the reasons seem to get more and more interesting. Malcolm Little famously erased his "slave name" and replaced it with an X. I also just recently learned about FM-2030. And then there's the self-naming practices that grew around the hacking and early web scenes, and which still features prominently in places like the FGC and furry fandom.
So you've got a guy fighting cynical capitalist legalism, a guy attempting to erase the detritus of colonialism from his identity, another guy trying to erase his ties to tribalism, and then a bunch of people trying to mask their identities in presumed Dark Forest (concluding in, essentially, the creation of alter egos).
egypturnash
To name a thing is to own it.
Own yourself. Own fragments of yourself. Own your public self as something separate from your private self. Own a public self that does things your normal public self would never (be allowed to) do. Own a new identity, maybe it'll replace your main one if it really works out.
wodenokoto
I also learned of prince while he was the artist formerly known as prince and it took me a long time to learn that it wasn’t some quirky stage name but that he actually was an artist that was formerly named prince.
Even to this day, calling him prince feels like an abbreviation.
dylan604
“How many people can just say ‘Hey, I’m changing my name to this symbol so can you use it from now on?’ and everyone’s like ‘Alright. Okay. No questions asked. You’re Prince! We’ll do it!’ It was kind of funny to me.”
Um, "You're Prince!" No, I'm not. That's the point of this conversation. I am no longer Prince. Do not call me that.
Brian_K_White
"I don't have a verbal name, just this graphical symbol"
"Ok. Steve it is then."
As far as I'm concerned, by failing provide something usable himself, he waived any right to ownership or interest, and everyone was free to apply whatever placeholder label they want when they need to refer to him. It's no longer any of his business. He opted out of having any say in it.
In other words this is not a Dayta vs Dahta situation.
I'm lucky in that I have no reason to refer to him for any reason that doesn't involve his music or performances from the time when he was still named Prince, so as far as I'm concerned, for all of those references at least, it's still valid to refer to that artist by that name, and it doesn't matter that some other artist exists at some other time. It's a Prince album, a song written by Prince, Prince played pretty great guitar in a special one time, etc.
I bet he still collected royalty checks that Prince earned and retained ownership of all his posessions and copyrights even though he was supposedly not Prince any more. Oh I guess Prince, while still Prince, had the right to gift everything to the new person same as to a child or anyone else, but then that comes with a pretty big tax which I bet he didn't pay at the time of this massive transaction.
dylan604
I assume then you feel the same way about Musk's kid's names?
Brian_K_White
They claim not to have any names at all?
They retain claim on any rights of being a Musk family member?
If either of those then yes of course. But that's not the case is it?
selimthegrim
“It’s A Pimp Named Slickback. It’s like A Tribe Called Quest, you say the whole thing straight”
badlibrarian
> “I was talking about chat groups and chatting and meeting people online and he seemed confused by it”
Imagine if he made a dating site.
null
curtisszmania
[dead]
A big part of why it worked for him was not only that he was real famous, but the whole technology world in the area was new, and he was the first to do it.
If everyone started doing it, people would quickly begin ignoring it, or a standard Unicode mechanism would have been developed.
And now, his name has reverted to Prince.