There’s a lot in a name right? History and origin can make a name be mighty! Names can also be created, changed, or ignored. I wasn’t born with DjRelAt7. No one called me that as a nickname either. When I first started writing I wanted to keep my true identity anonymous. The internet can be a scary place and I wanted to be safe not sorry. So for months…well really minutes because I’m a procrastinator, I came up with the pen name DjRelAt7. Over the last few years people have asked where the name came from and what it means. What’s in a pen name?
Dj …
When I was growing up we had a floor stereo unit. It had the record player on top for our vinyls, a section to tune into the radio, and two cassette tape slots. This stereo unit belonged to Papi, so we didn’t touch it when he was home. When he wasn’t we’d play the one or two cassettes we’d purchased. Mami had this cute peach Sharp boom box where she’d play only her cassettes. What we listened to is what they listened to.
When the latest song would come out on KISS FM or Hot 97, the kids in class would sing them. This was always annoying for me because in school I could not sing along. Humming is not the same. Trust. So for my birthday I asked for my own boom box. When I wasn’t reading my stack of library books I was listening to the radio. I had my blank cassette in the deck so I could record the latest song to learn the words. I remember listening to the likes of Angie Martinez and Wendy Williams thinking I to could have a future on the radio. While that thought didn’t make it off my wish list, I wanted to carry out that voice in my writing. I wanted to feel like I was in the booth in front of a microphone talking to my audience about topics that mattered to us all.
Rel …
If you’ve been along for the journey here on My Pocketful of Thoughts you’ll have picked up that my real name is Arelis. I wanted my pen name to have a part of the real me in it. The Rel is that part. Actually after playing around with it for a bit it was the part that flowed the best. Dj Rel on the ones and twos y’all!
At 7…
Like all disc jockeys, you can catch their show at a particular time. If you’re a fellow Z100 fan than you catch the Elvis Duran and the Morning Show between 6 and 10. I wanted to be consistent with what time I came on. I wanted my show to start at 7 in the morning or at night. If you check out my past posts the time that they publish to the site is either 7:13 am or pm. As time has gone by I’ve become more flexible and its some variation of the numbers 713. You find my more recent ones published at 7:13, 10:37, 12:37, 1:37 or 3:17 …morning or night.
Put that all together and you get DjRelAt7. My keyboard is my microphone. Can you dig it?
A Penny for your thoughts!
Do you use a pen name when you write? How did you come up with it? Did you have a career in mind when you were younger that transformed into something else? Do you know the meaning of your name?
Until then,
