When I picked my Burlesque name back in ’08 I had spent a year at least jotting down ideas, messing about with word play & researching every name I came up with to check it hadn’t been used.
The first time I performed [which was a spontaneous event] I was asked to give a name I’d pretty much always knew I wanted to use Von as a first name [ not a joining/middle name] and right before I went on ‘Von Vamp’ is what came out. It was one of three names on my original list inspired from articles and books I’d been reading on Palo Negri the last of the great Vamps! & that’s where Vamp came from – it just had a perfect ring to it and I adored the fact it was an alliteration too.
I know there’s a lot of problems in the burly community with stealing acts, costumes and sadly not only that but names too. Stage names are a very personal trait to your branding, acts & performance I think a name sets up an idea straight away of what sort of performer you are. So when newcomers steal names or don’t do their research properly I can only wonder what they were thinking.
If it’s the research, it isn’t hard to type a name in to facebook / google / twitter to do a brief search first off! If you can’t even manage to do that then you can’t be too interested in the Burlesque scene – just like one of my top pet burly peeves: Performers who do not do their research on Burlesque History & current ‘hot’ performers on the scene.
More outrageous is if it’s the first option stealing a name, my mind is boggled why you would do such a thing! To hopefully be mistaken for your namesake performer? Because you liked the sound of it? [Flattering but if you can’t see the problem there’s something wrong]
It’d hard to come up with a definite answer to this as I didn’t steal a name or pick mine on the bases of another performer’s name.
Popular Burly Names
Top list of cliché names on the bury circuit:
DeVille, Rose, Pearl, Teese, Tease, Kitty, Kitten, Dolly, Cherry…. the list goes on
We already have enough lovely burly ladies using these names – newcomers unless it’s really original way of using such names should really be a bit more creative! There are a lot of long standing performers with fabulous said names!
All the established perfumers using these names picked them for personal reasons which is what everyone should do – something personal to you to give it meaning and make it feel more like yours!