Finally

What is in a name? They are proper nouns; historically used to describe or define a specific unique object. Names can do that too, and also historically do. Take the name Victor, which is a literal word meaning to conquer, originating from vincere from Latin. Or Aléxandros, which is nothing more than a compound word in Greek ["defender of man"] that became angelicised to become Alexander. There's also names such as Hope, Angel, Amber, Genesis, and so on. Names aren't random origin-less syllables that happen to sound pretty. If we name objects, pets, places, and virtually everything we interact with for their actual function, purpose, origin, or timbre, I see no reason why human names should be any different.

So I ended up choosing my name. There's a few reasons that I chose these names, and it took a few years of consideration to arrive at this point. There are some functional reasons for this naming schema. For example, it makes it easy for me to instinctively differentiate a person's relation to me based off of what they call me.

My first name is Kenneth from birth. In certain environments, I prefer to be associated with this name as it was originally what I went by for much of my life. I also use it for closer friends. This name is leveraged as the first name to present as a more formal and traditional name for impression's sake, like in professional environments. However, it remains my least-used public facing name.

North was intended to be unisex and easy to spell and convey as it's a generic, one-syllable word. It carries a positive connotation to "continue forwards". Though, I suppose something like Sky or Skyler would have also worked equally as well. This concept also allows me to self-reference myself when stylising my last name as ha1vorsen, where the L is exchanged for a northwards facing arrow. Using "ha1vorsen" also helps if the name "Halvorsen" is taken as a username for online accounts.

My initials also spell out two prominent symbols for me, being KH (Kingdom Hearts) and NH (Nintendo Homebrew). Kenneth and Halvorsen both use similar amounts of characters, allowing the name to appear balanced in terms of character length.

Truncating parts of the name spells out HALKEN, which happens to be the same name as the original developers of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby. I've capitalised on this by developing my first personal website using the first three letters of my last and first names, respectively. If I wanted to, I could extend this to Norsen or Kensen as well.

I can self-reference anything denoting myself as Northern.

The possibilities would make it insane to not confirm this as my identity. Flexibility is one of my most favored traits regarding any topic.

North

And still, there are other reasons as well for the name.

It doesn't come with presumptions about character, like something like Karen or Kyle would in the modern day - unless you would like to believe I am a child of Ye and Kim Kardashian.

I did underestimate the fact that people misinterpret the name as Morris, Marth, or Mark over the phone. But I don't otherwise anticipate many regrets stemming from North. I've seen people without the capacity for original jokes attempt to achieve humor by referring to me as any of the other three cardinal directions, and some people parallel the name to Ye's child. It's simple, it's to the point, and it works. It can even seen as an immutable reminder to continue looking ahead, or looking up, to the north. After all, I even style my hair upwards to convey this exact concept.

At first, I wanted something that would transliterate into a Japanese word. An equivalent for North would be 北 (Kita). I don't mind Kita, given that Keaton is a name I considered at one point, so I am already pleased with the phonetics.

Where do names originate? Words. Words from languages past, normally, but words nonetheless. Where is the requirement that said name must have roots in an archaic language?

This is to say, names have always had origins from words within local languages. Unless you look at names such as Amber, Genesis, Sage, Hope, Angel, etc. with the same scorn, this name is no different.

I've also considered Tidus (tee-duss), Ventus, (ven-tuhs), Xi (shi), some variation of K (kei/kay/k). I'm still not against them.

But in the end, it was important that the name I use was malleable, flexible, easy to convey, gender-neutral, and short.

Halvorsen

This was based off of my family's pet name. My dog's name was inspired by the Hilton Hotels franchise, so I thought it to be fitting to have my surname inspired from my dog as well. Conrad Hilton's father was named Augustus Halvorsen Hilton, and so I merely took the middle name directly and made it my surname. Being strongly European in origin, Halvorsen also tends to look more exotic and desirable at first glance than other common surnames in America, so it helps avoid negative prejudice.

However, it wasn't nearly the only reason. The sheer flexibility of this name also led to it being chosen as a surname.It can also combine with my middle name to form Norsen, offering flexibility in that sense as well.

At first, I intended to pair this surname with a European-esque middle name, Tidus (Tee-dus). While Tidus Halvorsen has a cool ring to it, I wanted the other benefits listed of the names that I decided on, as listed above.