Why "Zipperbear"?

When I was a small child, or, more specifically, when I was a toddler, there was a time when I was just learning to walk. I would climb to a standing position by holding on to a piece of furniture, then I would run to the next piece of furniture. If I tried to stop, I would fall over, so I would run back and forth, zip-zip-zip, between pieces of furniture, all day long. My parents gave me the nickname Zipperbear. Out of dozens of childhood nicknames, it's the only one that lasted for any length of time. The convenient overlap between the anatomical implications of zippers and the Bear community is purely coincidence.

Apparently, the practice of assigning Bear names is not unique to my family. Betsy-Bear gave her ex-housemate Harry the nickname Sleepy Bear, and of course her husband has to be Wigibear.

I've assigned Bear names to TiggerBear (who got an amazingly stripey sunburn the day I met him -- he's TggrBr on myspace.com) and ClipperBear (who doesn't want to be a Bear, but doesn't seem to have a choice).

I use "zbear" when "zipperbear" is too long. I've encountered a few others with similar Bear names. On the GLIB.org BBS in the DC area, there was a zzbear, who occasionally posted to various Square Dance e-mail lists; he's no longer subscribed under that address, and the BBS has since abandoned dial-in service and gone web-based. I've met him in person a few times at Square Dance Conventions, and we've chatted briefly. In his case, "ZZ" is a pun ("ZZ as in ZZ Top").  He is on LiveJournal as zzbear.

While trying out the AOL Instant Messenger that came bundled with Netscape, I found that the name ZBEAR was already taken, by a fellow in Florida. We exchanged a few messages, and he explained that he made up the name to mean "the last bear" (since "Omega bear" is too obscure).

If you search the web, you'll find another bearish fellow who had heart bypass surgery: What's in a Name? (he's also on the bear organists list: tomzipperbear).

Another similar name, which I'd seen floating around, was zbear20, who I finally met. He explained that he tried several usernames, with larger and larger numbers, on some web site, until he finally found one that was available.