History of my nickname "Yucca"

Yucca among yuccas. A photo taken on Tenerife (in the Canaries) by Liisa Sarakontu.

English-speaking people tend to mispronounce my name Jukka, so I started using the spelling "Yucca", since "Jukka" should be pronounced roughly as "Yucca". (Well, roughly. At least you would get the initial consonant right. I have collected some more specific pronunciation information.)

I started using "Yucca" as a nickname, partly because "Jukka" is a rather common name in Finland and I never had any nickname.

Yucca plants also have something to do with me, but that is a sad story. I had a nice tall yucca plant in my working room but I didn't handle it with care. So my nickname, reminding me of such mistakes, hopefully builds my character.

The image on the right presents a yucca moth, an insect of genus Tegeticula, which pollinates yuccas. The picture has been taken from a nice collection of images in the public domain and was originally an illustration in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1911.