LOS ANGELES — I DIDN’T expect to become a porn star. People rarely do. I was 19 years old, and my photographer roommate had an offer from a website to buy some nude pictures. We did a shoot and then waited two weeks in case I woke up in a panic over the idea of releasing naked photos of myself into the world. But I didn’t, and so I turned to the required paperwork. One of the boxes to fill in read “Stage Name (if applicable).”

Stage names are common in the entertainment industry — whether in Hollywood, rap or pornography — and they’re used for all sorts of reasons. But at a time when people can be whoever they like on the Internet, when we are all negotiating who we are in which setting and for which audience, somehow the combination of a woman whose job is fantasy and her fantasy professional name can make people lose their minds.

Consider the recent hysteria over the Duke University student who moonlights as an adult film starlet. Although it didn’t take long after the news broke for her fellow students and strangers to gleefully post her legal name online, “the Duke porn star,” as she has been called by media outlets from Forbes to The Guardian, has tried to control what she is called where. She used the pseudonym Lauren when giving interviews, and the pseudonym Aurora for her stage name in those same interviews. Finally, this week, she acknowledged her actual stage name — Belle Knox.

The whole kerfuffle doesn’t need to be as dramatic as people seem to think. For me, choosing a stage name felt less like concealing my identity (especially since I’d just turned over my Social Security number to strangers) and more like deciding on a user name for any Internet service or website.