Houyhnhnm,in their tongue, signifies a horse; and its etymology,
the perfection of nature.— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV: III
Houyhnhnm, to be pronounced as a whinney (whinnem), is the name Swift gave to his rational horse creatures in the final book of Gulliver's Travels. They rule over the bestial hominids, the Yahoos.
When, years ago, I decided that I would try Yahoo.com's excellent Web-based email service, I blanched a bit at the domain name. I was no Yahoo!
So I decided on the email name houyhnhnm, which would distinguish myself, I thought, from all the yahoos. And was pleasantly surprised when the name was available; it seemed such an obvious moniker to choose. Arguably, houyhnhnm@yahoo.com is the best email address on Yahoo; perhaps on all the Internet.
Email is not the only purpose for a Yahoo account, of course. This Geocities/Yahoo page is dedicated to rational horsing around. That is, this page is dedicated to my email listserves, provided by YahooGroups.
At present I run three email discussion groups.
The first is FilmFlam, in which we discuss film and video.
The second is Reading Matters, in which we discuss books and journalism and almost anything else one may read.
The third is Thinking Matters, in which we discuss ideas and issues of the day.
Feel free to contact me if you want to join the discussion. There are some pretty bright people on these lists: friends, friends of friends, and strangers (to me).
We are also a fairly well-mannered lot, and don't devolve into Flame Wars.
We Houyhnhnms leave such undignified discourse to the Yahoos on other lists.