Back in the '60s, when I worked in an editorial office, everybody who worked there had to have a recognizable squiggle for initialing the coversheets of manuscripts, so that one could see at a glance who had handled them & in what order. I chose a script F, the initial of my last name. I also used it to mark books that I kept at work, and as a signature on notes. When I joined a commune in 1972, I used that script F for my written name, but "Joe" for my spoken name. There was another Joseph there, but he had changed his name to Aidan, so there was no ambiguity. Aidan, however, was told by a guru in Tennessee that changing one's name was disrespectful of one's parents, so he changed his name back to Joseph, supposing that that was different enough from Joe. I was annoyed, and wrote on the announcement "But what will people call *me* when they are annoyed at me?", to which a friend replied "Joey". I thereupon announced that my spoken as well as written name should be F. When I left in 1981, I went back to introducing myself as Joe (to avoid this lecture), but then I moved into a house with several other ex-communards, and I was still F to them, and there are still a few people who call me that.

That explains the F in Joe_F.

Sorry you asked?