Can someone tell me what an Avatar is? I know it's the name given to the icons below certain user's names, but why not call them icons??

Just curious!

Rob.

I wondered where that name came from as well. First time someone asked about it (I think at SP), I didn't know what the *bleep* they were talking about, heh.

Avatars are generally representative of either a concept or attribute of a person. More loosely, in the context of the forums, they are generally used to indicate either an interest of a person, are an image of the person themselves, or are a (now-banned) company logo. IIRC, the word itself is derived from Sanskrit.

Encarta http://dictionary.msn.com says:

av·a·tar [ávv tr ] (plural av·a·tars) noun

1. incarnation of Hindu deity: an incarnation of a Hindu deity in human or animal form, especially one of the incarnations of Vishnu such as Rama and Krishna

2. embodiment of something: somebody who embodies, personifies, or is the manifestation of an idea or concept

3. COMPUTING image of person in virtual reality: a movable three-dimensional image that can be used to represent somebody in cyberspace, for example, an Internet user

also from

www.dictionary.com as follows:

avatar

1. <chat, virtual reality> An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space.

2. (CMU, Tektronix) root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix computers on which the name of the superuser account is "avatar" rather than "root". This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term "superuser", and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.

Yeah, Annette and thewitt right. Avatar is from Sanskrit, also Hindi. It's "Avataram" in Tamil and some other south indian languages.

In mythology, sometimes, a God is born on the earth as a mortal (human or some animal) to accomplish a certain task. This incarnation is called an "avatar" of that God. For example, Rama and Krishna are all avatars of Vishnu. A single God may have had multiple avatars (not simultaneously).

So the similarity is that the "icon" a person uses is an incarnation of himself to accomplish a certain task - chat or posting or whatever. He may use another avatar for another purpose. The scope of an avatar is non-existent outside the context.

This should have been the reason for adoption of this word.

Annette, it's so nice to see you back after a while. Cheers!

Wing.