K.W. “Will” Murray is Willscrlt on the InterWebs

If you know me online, you probably recognize my “handle” or alias of “Willscrlt”, which I pronounce as “Will Scarlet”.

Since I usually go by my shorter name of Will, and since I had red hair (which later turned dark auburn, and is now mostly brown with natural red highlights), and because I grew up reading the adventures of Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, and the other Merry Men, I thought the name “Will Scarlet” would be a good alias to use online. I discovered someone was already using that name on another site. I dropped the vowels from the word “Scarlet” and the middle capital letter, and my online identity of “Willscrlt” was born. That was back in 1987, which means it predates every website in existence. I initially used the handle on computer bulletin board services (BBSes), and then started using it on websites after they became a thing.

While I have been very fortunate to be able to register the alias “Willscrlt” on most sites, I am not the only “Willscrlt” to be found on the Internet. The largest site I am aware of where this is the case is aol.com. Since “Willscrlt™” is my personal trademark, I tried to resolve that problem to avoid confusion and identity problems, but never got any response back from AOL. The point of the story is that in most caes, if you see “Willscrlt” online, you can usually assume it is me (especially if joined with my full name), but not always.