Pixie and Sprite!!? what'd I miss??

[Figment]

Tim,
I just noticed the change in your end-of-post signature. When did this boat-naming frenzy occur? I know I haven't been around much lately, but damn that's a biggie!

Did both names spring from the same muse, or were there separate moments of inspiration?

[dasein668]

I know that they named Sprite almost as soon as the Lyman arrived... maybe before? Pixie is new....

[Tim]

Hmm. Somehow I missed this post yesterday when it was new, and only found it now because someone mentioned to me that they hoped I'd answer.

As it happens, the two names were seperate moments of inspiration, as it were. I give Heidi credit for both names (and for Glissando, also).

Sprite has a simple derivation, but ended up being appropriate in other ways too. We names the Lyman Sprite because, well, Sprite the drink was made of "lymon", if you recall the ad campaign. But we wouldn't have named her something that stupid if it didn't also convey a certain justifiable meaning that we felt was appropriate to the boat. She was named early on, though it hasn't been publicized because the boat is so far from being in the water. (She's dismantled now; I did that back in the fall, and have pictures that I haven't posted on the site.)

Heidi had the Pixie inspiration in the middle of the night a few weeks ago; she even woke me up to tell me. (I hate that, and probably grumbled something noncommittal.) It took me a day or two to get into the name, but in the end have come to embrace it fully. It's a light, fun name that hopefully conveys thoughts of skating downwind under full sail (including mizzen staysail, of course!), with upkicked heels. On top of that, it's short, impossible to mispronounce or misspell, and is relatively unique. We definitely wanted to steer away from the variety of names that might have related to the boat's unfortunate fire-ridden past; too bad Phoenix is so over-used, usually by inappropriate boats (which is a good thing, since we don't encourage fires on board...but too bad such an absolutely perfect name was pre-tainted). There's even a boat I saw online now called Fenix, pronounced the same, which I hate.

My signature here in the forum was modified for a couple reasons: I wanted to add all my boats (ridiculous, isn't it?), and had previously been unable because the signature didn't allow enough characters. After changing that configuration for the forum, I added everything.

And there you have it.