Content-Type: text/shitpost

In an employer chat channel, a co-worker once asked “if you were a supervillain, what would your power be?”

I think the answer is obvious. With a name like “Dominus” it is inevitable that I would be the evil master scientist, Markus von Dominus, and regularly threaten to conquer and/or destroy the world.

“Von” has been obsolete in Germany since 1919. Some people still have it as part of their surname, although it no longer has any legal significance. Some other people change their names to add it. I briefly wondered if it would be fun to change my name to “von Dominus”, but I found a list of other people who had done so and they were all pretentious jackasses. I did not want to be so obviously a pretentious jackass, so I gave up the idea.