So What On Earth Does Loepsie Mean?

Even though I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the story briefly here and there, I think it’s about time I properly explained where the word Loepsie comes from and what it means. I’m sure many of you have been wondering! First of all: no, it’s not my name (first or last), but I don’t mind being called Loepsie. My name is Lucy, which you probably know if you visit my blog regularly. And if you’re new, hi! Nice to meet you ;)

I’ve been going by the nickname Loepsie for a very, very long time. Let me start this story at the beginning. When I was in seventh grade of elementary school, so 10 or 11 years old, there was this animated children’s show on TV. It was about three brothers who were circus performers. One was huge and round and had a big beard, one was tiny and only had a few hairs, and then there was the “normal” one, if I remember correctly. I’ve been trying to find the show, I believe it was called something along the lines of “The Houdini Brothers”, but I can’t for the life of me find it anywhere. Anyway, the characters spoke in jibberish, and the little one would say something that sounded like loooopsyyyyyy in a high-pitched voice frequently. Usually when doing some acrobatic trick. Many kids watched this show so it was quite a recognisable phrase. Now every now and then people (adults/teachers, usually) would call me Lucy in the English pronunciation: Loosy, rather than the Dutch pronunciation, which is best described with the German letter ü, so Lüsy. I think that’s where the association came from, but one day one of my classmates randomly called me Loopsy in that same pitch that the animated character used. This would be spelled Loepsie in Dutch, so now you know how it’s pronounced if you didn’t already, haha!

This classmate’s friends picked up on it, and the boys kept calling me Loepsie consistently. Pretty quickly the cartoon character pitch that the word initially had disappeared, and everybody just started calling me Loepsie. I believe the teacher even said it a few times, haha! I adopted it as my nickname, and kept using it in the following years. Now bear in mind this was in the beginning era of the internet, when what we now call a username was still referred to as a “nickname”. When I started signing up for all these websites that required you register a nickname, I thought “oh, I have a nickname: Loepsie!”, and so it happened that Loepsie became my standard internet presence. I used the name Loepsie to sign up for YouTube so that I could subscribe to Pursebuzz and Panacea81. I used the name to sign up to Facebook and Twitter and every other website I registered with. When my YouTube channel started to grow, the name Loepsie was already embedded everywhere and changing it would have been quite the endeavour. So yeah, the name stems from way before personal branding was a thing, and thus has no sense or meaning, haha! Fun fact: my Facebook page handle is LoepsieOfficial, because I hogged Loepsie for my personal Facebook page years before. Oops.

That’s it! The story of how I became Loepsie. And how it very disappointingly doesn’t mean anything (sorry). Over the past couple of years, as my social media presence became more of a business model, I’ve considered re-branding several times. I’m glad I’ve always decided to stick with Loepsie though. The word being jibberish means it isn’t used much anywhere besides when referring to me. It’s not hard to pronounce, even though I’m sure the oe is confusing to some, and it’s pretty easy to remember I think. If I could go back I may have spelled it differently, as quite a few people think it’s Leopsie now (any linguists able to explain how this happens?). But all in all I’m happy with the name. Loepsie is me :)