conlanger linguist

Östen Dahl writes, at http://tinyurl.com/o2pub, of his being a conlanger in his
youth, though it is implied that he later put away such childish things:
  The word "nerd", graphically spelt "nörd", entered my native
  language, Swedish, fairly recently. Nevertheless, and even
  without access to computers, I displayed severe symptoms of
  nördiness at an early age. In particular, I had an obsession
  with languages, and spent quite some time making up what is
  nowadays called "conlangs", i.e. languages invented for fun.
  (I suspect that such nördiness is really a benign form of
  Asperger's syndrome.)


His article goes on to mention James McCawley, "this by now legendary and much regretted linguist".

--And.