A Cucumber by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet

What’s in a name? My blog title and nom de plume are somewhat unusual, but they both do have meaning and at least a little bit of a story behind them. The title, of course, is a take on the phrase “once in a blue moon,” which means once in a very great while. For all you trivia buffs out there, the occurrence of a blue moon has absolutely nothing to do with the moon’s apparent color. The term refers to those rare occasions when there are two full moons in one month; the second full moon of the month is the blue moon. If you’re curious about when the next blue moon is due, this website has pretty much everything you could ever want to know about blue moons. As for why I chose this for the name of my blog, sadly, it’s a descriptor of the frequency with which I’ll probably post once my first term of law school starts up in the fall. Until then, though, I’ll try to post a bit more regularly–maybe four or five times in a blue moon.

In the few other online locales where I use “Kappa” as my screen name, everyone (understandably) automatically assumes that I’ve named myself after the Greek letter. (I always fear that these people then assume I belonged to a sorority in college. Nothing against sororities, but–yikes, so not me.) In fact, the Greek alphabet connection didn’t even occur to me when I selected “Kappa” as an online identity. In reality, I named myself after a favorite sushi. “Kappamaki” is cucumber sushi. One day, I was trying to think up a screen name that incorporated the first letter of my real-life name, but then my stomach growled and sidetracked my mind to visions of bento boxes. Luckily, my mind wandered in a useful direction, hit on kappamaki, and voila, I had a name.

I had originally assumed that if “kappamaki” meant cucumber sushi, “kappa” must be Japanese for “cucumber,” but I soon discovered that the association isn’t that simple. My beloved sushi is called kappamaki in honor of kappa, who are polite but dangerous water demons in Japanese folklore. Their powers derive from the water they hold in the bowl-like indentations in their craniums, but humans regularly defeat kappa by bowing to them; kappa always courteously bow in return, tipping all the water out of their head-bowls. Kappa are notorious for eating small children who wander into their ponds, but given the choice, they prefer munching on cucumbers. So, though calling myself “Kappa” inadvertently suggests that I’m a sorority sister who eats little kids, in reality, my name is just meant to signify that I really like cucumbers. Honest.