Why we chose Felkyo, a Norn word to be the author of side hustle to freedom blog posts equally co-written, co-edited and co-published by both of us.
The side hustler called Felkyo
So we figured out that we needed a name that made it obvious when we had both contributed equally to the creation, drafting, editing, polishing and publishing of a side hustle blog post. We wasted time on much head scratching, ideation and discussion.
Choosing a name
Firstly, it had to be something that was gender neutral since it represented both CJ and Matt. Secondly, it had to be topic neutral. Finally, it couldn’t be biased towards personalities or hobbies or interests or colours….we could go on but you’d get bored. Matt and CJ both did.
We ultimately rejected all of the ideas that we came up with so we pulled something off the whiteboard. CJ remembered that we had considered Felkyo as a potential name for a buy to let property company. Luckily we dismissed it as an option for a company name.
What does Felkyo mean?
Felkyo is a Norn word which means “witch” in English. For almost 1,000 years, the language of the people of Orkney was a variant of Old Norse. Norrœna, or Norn is the name of that variant language. CJ was born and brought up in Orkney. As such she has a soft spot for these words. This since many of them were still in common use when she was growing up. Although she hears fewer and fewer of them over time.
How did it make it onto the board?
But why was Felkyo on the board to start with? What does the Norn word for witch have to do with CJ and Matt? Well that’s more about a hobby than a side hustle. We create a massive scary tableau in front of our house every Halloween. This is such a big build that we start planning the layout and building new props over the summer. We sketch out the layout on that same whiteboard we used to brainstorm company names. The brainstorming was going on that summer too. So that’s why we ended up with a Halloween related word as our shared name.
If you want to know more about Norn then please visit the most helpful Orkneyjar website. This is itself a non-profit side hustle.
If you want to know more about Orkney the Orkney Tourist Board website is the best place to start.