Aajonus' real name and PhD?

[TylerDurden]

Ok, how about "Raw Paleo Diet's Promoter and Humble Researcher" ?

  Frankly, this would just lead to hubris on my part. I am no guru and there are plenty other RVAFers with more media-savvy etc. than I have, and none of the ideas I have re diet were originally my own, just borrowed from others.

[eveheart]

Ok, how about "Raw Paleo Diet's Promoter and Humble Researcher" ?

If you change your mind about the hubris thing, how about "Discoverer and Founder of the Raw Paleo Diet, Internet Forums, and Paleolithic Man"? You could donate all your speaker's fees and the royalties to charity.

[TylerDurden]

If you change your mind about the hubris thing, how about "Discoverer and Founder of the Raw Paleo Diet, Internet Forums, and Paleolithic Man"? You could donate all your speaker's fees and the royalties to charity.

  I'm useless at public speaking and get stagefright during such occasions; so that's out! And I didn't start up this forum, Craig Bates did the all-important tech-stuff and GS got things going after that, and I certainly didn't invent "Palaeolithic Man"(!) and Vinny Pinto invented the term "Raw, Palaeolithic Diets". The only difference is that VP used the term to also describe raw diets which incorporated non-palaeo foods like raw dairy or raw veggie-juice and I kept on coming across negative online reports re those foods, so I chose to use the term in a more restrictive way.

[sanborn]

Yes, Aajonus Vonderplanitz is his real name, because he legally changed it to that.  I do know what he was named at birth although I think I should get his OK before posting it.  Someone may wish to malign him although I don't see what is wrong with having an ordinary name or an extraordinary one for that matter.  You are right about the Richard.  His family name is an ordinary one also. 
His Ph.D. is in nutrition. 

[svrn]

very itneresting thread. Perhaps he lied about his degree in order to get the info out to help more people. Maybe he is part hollywood huckster. All I know at this point is that much of what he says worked for me. Before I took all of what he said to be almost 100 percent true but now I am much more open to the idea of how he imbellishes things. Perhaps I will stray away from his teachings a bit more and take on GS's approach of combing the best things from other which I was before more reluctant to do since I had much trust in this guy because his teaching made me healthy more so than any other person I have looked to for help.

[intrigued]

OK, I dug into my files on the name question. Here's what Aajonus said when I told his fan about the Swigart claim:

"Hi, Donald,
Those are the correct spellings. However Swigart is not the true ancestral spelling and it is my great great grandfathers mothers name. Von der Planitz was his true name.
healthfully,
aajonus"

...

You took this differently than I did.  From what I can tell, Swigart was his great great great (great x 3) grandmother's name, which, for some reason, his great great grandfather took.  Basically, 5 parental steps back there was a Mr Vonderplanitz and Miss Swigart who got together, and for whatever reason their child took the name Swigart.  Generations later, Richard/Aajonus changed his surname to Vonderplanitz to be what it should've been in the first place.

The original ancestral spelling just means that it wasn't originally swigart, but something close - http://www.houseofnames.com/Swigart-history?A=54323-292.

After watching him on youtube talking about being abused (beaten) as a child, I'm guessing maybe the name change was, in part, to distance himself from family a little?  I don't know, now I'm grasping at straws, but I just wanted to throw that first part out there since no one else popped in with that interpretation.

[PaleoPhil]

You took this differently than I did.  From what I can tell, Swigart was his great great great (great x 3) grandmother's name, which, for some reason, his great great grandfather took.

OK, only difference from what I said is the generation. I thought AV's father was the one who took the Swigart name. Thanks for letting me know that it was AV's great great grandfather who took it from AV's great x3 grandmother.
The original ancestral spelling just means that it wasn't originally swigart, but something close - http://www.houseofnames.com/Swigart-history?A=54323-292.

By alias I only meant a different last name was adopted by a man. There's probably a clearer term for that, but I don't know what it is.

After watching him on youtube talking about being abused (beaten) as a child, I'm guessing maybe the name change was, in part, to distance himself from family a little?  I don't know, now I'm grasping at straws, but I just wanted to throw that first part out there since no one else popped in with that interpretation.

That sounds plausible.

[intrigued]

Ah, from reading your post, I was thinking that you understood it to mean he changed Swigart to the original ancestral spelling "Vonderplanitz".  Like I was saying, Vonderplanitz (or similar) would've been his great x3 grandfather's name. 

I was just posting the link to show that Swigart could've been Schwick or Schwiger, or who knows what (but not anything close to Vonderplanitz).  Him saying that it wasn't the original ancestral spelling is kind of like those math problems where they give you one piece of information you don't need to solve the problem.

Anyway, that's the way I interpret it.  Oh, and I think alias worked.

[PaleoPhil]

Cool, thanks.

[reyyzl]

Anyway, that's the way I interpret it.  Oh, and I think alias worked.

Pen name?