So, after I finished my master thesis, and finally got my degree, my supervisor proposed to write a paper out of the thesis. I thought, why not? Some publications can always add more points to your CV. When it was time for the submission, I was in such a great dilemma regarding… my name! 😀
What should I put as my name??
FYI, I only have a single name, Paramita. No last name. In the university I’m registered as Paramita Paramita, in Italy (as resident) I’m registered as Paramita Senza Cognome a.k.a Paramita Without-Last-Name, while in the world wide web *I mean.. social networks ;)* I’m known as Paramita Mirza, Mirza being my father’s name. I even have a publication under the name of Mirza Paramita, following my recent project, and the author of the paper mix my name up ;p. So.. which one should I use?
I realized that I should consider this seriously. Because being a researcher means that you want to have a lot of publications, and to be known by a distinguished name. Once I publish a paper under a certain name, then the following publications better be published under the same name. So that when people want to know all of your works and put your name in Google search, or Google Scholar, they will immediately get the result. But, does it have to be my official name? The same name as in my IDs, namely my passport?
To confuse me even more, there’s a funny reference from a friend :D. There’s a guy named Robert Smith?, and yes, the question mark is really there. So this problem of choosing ‘author-name’ exists not only within people without surname, but also within people with a very common name. Can you imagine how many people in this world that have names like John Smith or Robert Smith? 😉 That explains the reason of the question mark there: to avoid being entirely invisible in Google.
The conclusion is.. I don’t think I really need to put my official name. I could just come up with an ‘author-name’ that can make me not invisible in Google. Among all the options and suggestions my friend gave me, including Paramita?, Paramita! and Paramita 🙂, Paramita Mirza is the one I chose. Paramita! makes me look angry all the time, and Paramita 🙂 is too… happy :D, though I actually like that one.
Anyway, in the end the paper is rejected :(. I was quite disappointed, but after a cheer up from someone *thank you, dear :-* * I could get over it. Sometimes it happened in research life, and it doesn’t mean that I have to stop trying. After all, I still have a long PhD journey ahead of me ;).