JEBs Pens ~ Pen Names

How I came up with the names for my fountain pens:

Ah, pen names. When I first began to make custom fountain pens, I began to think about pen names. So I wondered: Where do they come from? and how can I get some?

The first pens I made were kit pens, and kit pens each have their own name. Sometimes the name is based on the pen’s theme; other times the name doesn’t seem to have any connection. So when I began making pens from scratch and posting them on forums, I realized they should have a name. But how do you come up with a name? At first, I used the material name. But that wouldn’t work long-term, and I soon realized I had to come up with a better naming scheme.

I decided on three main criteria for the name search: First, the naming scheme had to be expandable. I wanted the list to work, whether it was 5 styles or 25 styles. Second, the names must be connected. And finally, I wanted the names to sound exotic.

To get inspiration, I first looked online at other pen companies. But that wasn’t very helpful. Some companies seemed to use related names, while others didn’t seem to have any cohesion across their names. So I started searching the internet again, but this time just for anything that might spark an idea.

The search continued…

As I continued my search, I ran across a list on Wikipedia’s list of the highest mountains on earth. And as I read through the list of the various mountains, I realized the list was perfect! I can use the names of the individual mountains or mountain peaks as my pen names. The list was extensive (check #1). The names would have cohesion (check #2). And finally, most had exotic-sounding names (check #3). So from this one category of names, I’d have a cohesive list of many exotic names to choose from. Checkmate!

The first name I chose was Dhaulagiri. Definitely not a common name! Next came the pen style I now call NAZCA. I chose Nazca because I wanted to use Nazca Lines for an altered version of the pen.

You see, I’m a sci-fi buff. And one day I was watching a show on TV about the geoglyphs in Peru known as the Nazca lines. I thought the name would be perfect for one of my pen styles. The pen has three rings on the flat top finial, so I thought the name would be a great play-on-words for the pen.

There was one small problem with using Nazca, though. Nazca isn’t technically the name of a mountain. In fact, it’s the name of the valley in that region. So I almost didn’t use it. However, I just had to use that name since the pen’s style fit it so well. Over time, a few names may veer away from the naming scheme, but for the most part, I’ll try to stay true to the naming scheme.

Below is a list of the current pen names. Each name has a link to information on Wikipedia.org about the related mountain.

JEBs Pen Names: