I got a question in my e-mail that I answer so frequently that I was surprised the writer did not already know the answer: why do I use M. Joseph Young on the covers of my books when my name is Mark? Do I not like the name Mark? Why, too, he might have asked, do I use my initials on my e-mails and forum posts, rather than my name? Well, therein lies more than one tale, but hopefully the telling will resolve the matter for more than just the one person. I’ll mention that I dislike answering questions by e-mail for exactly this reason, that I wind up having to answer them again for someone else eventually; but perhaps this will reach enough people that next time someone else asks, someone else will answer.
It’s pretty obvious that the name Young is a common one. I won’t say that it is as common as Smith or Jones, but I’m not certain it isn’t. It’s a bit difficult figuring out which really are the most common surnames in America. I remember a trivia question some decades back asking what the most common surname was in the Manhattan telephone directory. Care to guess? As the original answer said, “Wrong. It’s Wong.” I don’t know how Young compares to Wong on that basis, but it’s a rather ordinary name.
My mother, knowing that this was an ordinary surname, tried to give me an unusual first name. She failed. Not being much of a soap opera fan she was unaware that there was a character named Mark in a popular daytime television show–popular enough that for the first year after I was born people asked if that was where she got the name. She had only known one person named Mark in her entire life, an elderly man who had spoken up for her when she was not well during the pregnancy and her boss was pushing her too hard. I was named for him; he probably never knew it. However, as with many parents looking for unusual names for their children, she failed. I believe of the maybe ninety children attending kindergarten at the same time and place as I, six or seven had the name Mark, although one spelled it with a C.
My siblings fared somewhat better. I have encountered few Roys or Annettes in my life, and not many more Neils. It is perhaps unfortunate for him that one of those few is a rather famous individual who shares his last name as well, but that’s how things happen sometimes.
Because of how common my names were individually, my mother told me that I should always use my middle initial. Thus I sign my checks Mark J. Young–which is what appears on most of my legal paperwork, from diplomas and degrees to checking accounts and tax forms to drivers licenses and credit cards. She was right about it being common, though. When I was at the radio station I picked up an ASCAP list of members, and there was a Mark J. Young listed in it already. It was rather depressing at the time.
Still, anyone who has visited my web site has probably noticed that the song lyrics are all listed as written by Mark J. Young, and it’s listed as Mark Young’s Dungeons & Dragons™ materials. In college the J was such a familiar part of my name that some people used to call me Mark J. Musician, although there were quite a few less flattering surnames sometimes attached to that.
I went on the radio in 1979 as Mark Young, and was known by a fair chunk of the Christian community in the Lower Delaware Valley by that name until 1984.
It was during this time that I started writing–sort of. I had started a radio station newsletter, for which I did most of the writing and all of the editing. The station had worked out a trade agreement by which a local newspaper printed our newsletter in exchange for free advertising on the air. I worked with one of the executives there, the associate editor who happened also to be the owner’s son, and at some point our conversation turned to the possibility of me writing something for the paper. I had two or three pieces of political satire published on the editorials page there. However, since I was known already in the area as one of the personalities on the air at the local radio station, we agreed that I would use a pen name, and I suggested M. Joseph Young, which he liked and I thought sounded pretty good, very authorial. Thus I began my writing career under that name in the early eighties.
In the early nineties I began working on Multiverser. I had already written Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons™ Addict, which I was hoping to have published, and I kept the name M. Joseph Young as the name under which I published my first books. In fact, I think that the first article I ever published here at Gaming Outpost (which is also the first article I published on a web site that was not mine), Morality and Consequences: Overlooked Gaming Essentials, bore the name M. Joseph Young.
I then made a rather fateful decision. I had already posted a substantial amount of my Dungeons & Dragons™ material on my web site under the name Mark J. Young; however, I had used the name M. Joseph Young for all my Multiverser stuff and for this article. I was registering for a Gaming Outpost forum account so that I could interact with whatever comments my article garnered, and I did not know what name to use. If I used Mark Young or Mark J. Young, it would be dissociated from Multiverser and my Internet writing here; but if I used M. Joseph Young it would be dissociated from my Dungeons & Dragons™ pages. Besides, I had occasionally gotten letters in which the writer called me Joseph or even Joe, and I hope that no one of that name will be offended if I say quite honestly that it always bothered me. (This might be because I had a babysitter when I was very young who called me Mighty Joe Young, which I found intriguing until I learned that it was the name of a gorilla.) Yet Mark Joseph Young was entirely too long a name for an Internet forum. I briefly considered using the name of one of my most beloved game characters, but Tiras Arioch Kittim, Zemar of the House of Tsakataros was not shorter; besides, I was not seeking anonymity but identity–I was here so that people would know who I was, and would look for my books. Thus I decided to use M. J. Young, thinking that this would reduce the confusion.
It did not reduce the confusion. Rather than make the connection between Mark Young and M. Joseph Young, the initials name became a new name. People on the Internet, and thereby around the world, know me as M. J. In fact, on one forum some poor girl tried to introduce herself as MJ, and was almost rebuffed by regulars for whom that had become so completely identified with me that they thought she would have trouble establishing an identity under that name. Many who know me as M. J. do not know for what the initials stand, or that they are supposed to connect to my writings under different names. So it has been less successful than I’d hoped.
So now you know. If anyone asks, please explain it to them. People who know me in person generally call me Mark–except for those who have known me for so long, from their perspective, that they still feel compelled to call me Mister Young, and the many who call me Dad, no matter how tenuous their connection to our family.
I’ve done a bit more work on the music, in particular coming to grips with an arrangement of the song Brittany chose for her final Collision solo which rounds out our repertoire. I also did the usual Monday stuff, like taking my mother-in-law shopping, and managed to get a birthday present for the boy who celebrated last night. I’m up late, but I’m making progress.
–M. J. Young
