Why "Magpie"?

Shortly after my father's death, I began going by the name “Magpie” in my personal life. Conveniently, I made this decision just before I finally started making an effort to build a social network in Houston. I told my friends immediately, but transitioned my family and older acquaintances over gradually. However I held off making any changes at in my professional life: at a workplace as big as Chevron, it seemed too likely to lead to confusion.

But now that I no longer work at Chevron, I am finally trying to switch everything over to the use of the name “Magpie.” This means that in certain contexts where people knew me by my legal name, I use a dual name—Luke “Magpie” or L. "Magpie"—for now, but my plan is to use “Magpie” exclusively for introductions going forward. Eventually, I plan on having it changed legally as well, but in the United States you can call yourself anything you want as long as it's not for the purposes of fraud.

When I just introduced myself as “Magpie,” I've never had any issues, but when people learn that I chose it instead of having it inflicted on me by my parents, they suddenly have a lot of questions. The most common questions I get are probably:

“Why?”

“Why ‘Magpie’?”

“You know that doesn’t sound like a real name, right?”

A picture I drew of an Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) of the butcherbird family meeting a common magpie (Pica sp.): corvids of the Northern Hemisphere.

I have seen common magpies in the UK, Ireland, Korea, Colorado, and possibly Turkey. I still have yet to see an Aussie magpie in the flesh, but they're one of my favorite birds.

The glasses and quill pen the common magpie has are inspired by Seanan McGuire's character Hudson from two of her Wayward Children books.

Azure-winged magpies (Cyanopica cyanus) are, aside from the common magpies, one of several groups of corvids also called "magpies."

IIRC, the wild black-billed magpies that showed up at the Denver Zoo while I was watching the keas were right outside these birds' enclosure.

Why?

The first two questions are fair, and the short answer is to “Why?” I've never liked my legal name. When I was in undergrad I started going by “Arthur,” but I realized it would make for a lot of hassle and confusion when I moved abroad. However after my father died, I started thinking again about how I don't like my legal first name. On top of that, I became a very different person in a lot of ways after my father's death.

This is something I may talk about in the future, but after my father's death I felt like I had spent most of my adult life at least trying to make myself small, trying to make my square peg fit in the round holes society expects. That’s my mother’s strategy to this day, but it was never my father’s strategy, and as I looked around his house after his death and realized he was living his best life, I realized that whatever it took wanted to find how I could again “march to the beat of my own drummer,” as my mother used to say.

Why "Magpie"?

At the time, I specifically wanted a name that would be gender-neutral, but most gender neutral names have connotations to me that I didn't feel fit me. However, while I have various reasons for not using ‘Raven,’ ‘Robin,’ or ‘Jay,’ it occurred to me that—to me anyways—“Magpie” sounds like a real, and gender neutral(ish) name. Initially I just planned on using it as a pseudonym, but I realized that I liked being called by that name.

The term “magpie” refers to two unrelated types of birds: the Eurasian magpies of the corvid family and the Australian magpie of the butcherbird family—which ironically looks much more crow-like than any of Eurasian magpies. For different reasons I have sentimental connections to both the Australian magpie and the common magpies of the genus Pica.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Pekachu, licensed CC-by-SA.

Original source: Magpie pair on branch of Japanese persimmon Kono park

I saw a lot of Korean magpies, Pica serica, while living in Korea, but I don't think I ever got a good picture myself.

The American black-billed magpie, Pica hudsonia, in Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado. The scientific name seems to be what Seanan McGuire named her character Hudson after.

I've seen these birds myself at the Denver Zoo. Not officially on-exhibit, they just really like hanging out where the keas and their azure-winged cousins dwell.

Why I 💛 common magpies

Here are some reasons I love the common magpies of the genus Pica.

  1. The common magpie has a reputation for collecting shiny baubles. I have both a history of collecting literal shiny bubbles and metaphorical shiny baubles of information and ideas.

  2. Based on this reputation, my father wrote a children's book—never published and we couldn’t find the manuscript, sadly—called Balloon Man—in which the primary antagonist was a common magpie.

  3. Though I'd already made the decision by the time the book came out, I love Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series and the way she depicted magpies in two of her books. The spectacles on the magpie in my drawing are inspired by her character Hudson from those books.

  4. Living in Korea, I saw a lot of Korean magpies, or kkachi. They were probably the second most common bird I saw after brown-eared bulbuls, or chinpan, which my students called “nightingales.” Both magpies and bulbuls always lit up my day to see, but there was something about seeing magpies soaring and wheeling through the sky which always lifted my heart.

  5. The common magpie is the only bird confirmed to pass the mirror test. As an autistic person who has had to develop a level of self-awareness that often turns into crippling self-consciousness to cope in the neurotypical world, there’s just something about that to me.

Why I 💛 Aussie magpies

Here are some reasons I love the non-corvid Australian magpie:

  1. Australian magpies are one of my three species of birds observed to engage in all four kinds of avian social play.

  2. Aussie magpies are extremely behaviorally adaptable and flexible.

  3. Aussie magpies are both a symbol of Australiana and a somewhat divisive bird among Australians. This dynamic reminds me of the great-tailed grackles with respect to Austin: another bird with remarkable intelligence and a great singing voice that is often mistaken for a corvid.

  4. Aussie magpies sing beautifully. I always tell people that I don't sing well, but I sing loud and I sing like nobody's listening.

“(1)Magpie_Kensington_Park-7” by Wikimedia Commons user Sardaka,

CC BY 2.0

Aussie magpies are my third-favorite species of bird (after the kea and kakapo parrots of New Zealand), though I've still yet to see one in person

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