User:Neqou
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Neqou [also neQou, ne.Qou] is the internet pseudonym and identity of Nicole Hopkins of Princeton, NJ, USA.
The name is derived from the Japanese word for cat, 'neko'. As all orthographically similar derivations therefrom were unvailable in the Diablo multiplayer world of late 1999, Hopkins chose the only remaining k-sound, the Q, and recalling the fashion of Japanese romanizations, added a U to the end to distinguish herself from a cat [and from the user who had already chosen 'neqo'].
The pronounciation, in the spirit of the English language, is by no means phonetic in terms of the way it looks: a Q sans U is a troublespot, and an E following N can be 'nay' 'nee' 'neh' and so on. Since Hopkins is the one who came up with the name and bastardization of something much simpler that the monstrosity to which she's turned it, she is the one who gets to say how it's pronounced:
"Ne, as in 'neh' but not 'nay', 'koh' as in 'cole' and not 'cool'." [Wikipedia/Hamburg, DE 1.8.06]
In her spare time, meaning all of her time [due to grandiose misreadings of Marxist contamination of leisure and work], neQou can be found in The Library, smoking fancy cigarettes, and generally being a bohemian aesthete [Self Proclaimed©].
