Why "Drinian"

So, like most people these days, I have an online handle that I tend to use wherever I can. In fact, I have two -- the first is "sailracer6" and is an unfortunate result of blanking on creative, original names when I was in middle school and looking to get into this new-fangled "AOL Instant Messenger" thing...

But I digress. At some point after that, during my more formative and perhaps religiously-minded years, I decided that I needed a more unique handle, and "Drinian" came to mind. Since then it's been mispronounced and confused, so I thought it was time to clear things up. (Lord) Drinian is a fairly minor character in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, and more specifically The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He's the captain of the ship, and one of Caspian's more trusted advisors onboard. Not too much said about him, but he's a steady helmsman and got the crew to the end of the world. The owner of just about the only other "Drinian" on the Web when I chose the name, a sailboat, has just about the same thing to say.

Since then, a number of other Web dwellers have picked up on the name, so that a Google search yields quite a bit that has nothing to do with me. This domain name, in fact, used to belong to some sort of small financial company during the dot-com boom; after they were bought out, they let the registration lapse and I found my home on the Web.

As for Prof. Lewis, I'm still a reader of his work, fiction and otherwise, not to mention the scholarship that's been done on his life (those are two fair starting points). Regardless of disputes I may currently have over foundational premises, I don't know of too many people whose works are better at teaching how to think. In that sense, he's acted for me much as William T. Kirkpatrick did for him, it seems. Whether this is ironic, in the end, remains to be seen.