How'd you come up with your forum handle?

[nikloveland]

A discussion I had with jose got me thinking about an interesting thing: How do people come up with their nicknames. I think it tells a bit about who people really are. For example my handle is easy for me to remember since I have so many accounts scattered around the Internet. And Aaron's is a play on his profession (he works at a hospital running lab test). So I guess that's the question. Does your forum name have a back story or a reason you chose it?

[highlandpiper]

I'm of Scottish background and I started learning the Bag Pipes when I first came up with it. I have since stopped practising for various reasons but the name stuck as most people recognise it in the hobby.

[Parduz]

It is my real nickname from 1980, when i was 10.

It means (in my town dialect) "river rock" or "broken red brick" as well.
I gained it 'cause at that time i was one of the higher kids in the quarter an so i was "enlisted" in the local mini-basket team... but i'm negated to any kind of sport, and i was so rough at throwing the ball that my coach cried "it seems that you're throwing rocks to break the table!"
Now it is so fond that half of my best friends barely know my real name Even my wife call me by name just when she's angry

[Dominic]

In the 90s my first social internet experience was an IRC-based roleplaying group doing Star Trek - or something along those lines, it usually went haywire after ten minutes. Anyway, I did the vulcan security chief who went by the name of Satrek. It is by no means an abreviation for Star Trek, that only occured to me later and I have been too lazy to come up with a new general nick for myself.

[josedominguez]

I played an awfu lot of Tournament paintball a while back, one weekend we agreed to try out a new 'team building' activity weekend for our sponsors. We camped out the night before and an awful lot of tequila was consumed. Me (and the rest of the team) showed up at the event insisting we were from Mexico and had 'come for ze rifles'. Nobody at the event questioned that it was my real name and it stuck . I went on to write for a UK paintball mag and kept the name (I didn't want anyone at work connecting me to the stuff I was writing as it was a general humour section in the back and some of it was a bit dodgy). The majority of UK players think it's my real name and still call me Jose.
So, JoseCuervo inspired really

[mruseless]

Well, I hope my handle isn't a reflection of who I really am!

Back when I was in college, my dorm had a Pres, VP, Treasurer, and Secretary. They kept tying 2-2 on votes. So I was elected the "useless" chair. All I did was break ties. Since they addressed the others as Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, etc, they addressed me as Mr. Useless. The name stuck.

[Reivaj]

My nickname is just my name from back to start (<-- i don´t know how to say it). I used it in a D&D caracter, an elf archer called Reivaj. My real name is Javier (Read in this way--> ) and Reivaj (Read in this way<-- ). I hope you can undertand

[onemonkeybeau]

Mine's pretty self explanatory ;D

I'm Jim's testing monkey... and my real name is Beau...

onemonkeybeau

PS: I'm also known as momaw27 on the internet which is the name of the Hammerhead alien in the Cantina scene in Star Wars. And 27 is to help me remember my wedding anniversary date... so my wife doesn't kill me.

[glennwilliams]

Mine's kind of obvious. I'm not clever enough for a cool name.

[Sirrob01]

Had a thing for knights way back (still do although more druids now) hence the sir bit rob my first name and 01 as I found 01 was normally free on forums/email accounts etc, most people don't seem to like numbers after a nickname:).

[okumarts]

My name is my business and website name.
I guess it's all about shameless self-promotion.

[magpiestear]

mine relates to several things really. Prepare for a long and complex story.

Way back when I was at school in the sixth form me and some mates were into Marillion who always had a magpie and a crying jester on their album covers, one album was actually called 'script for a Jesters tear'. Seed of the idea sown.
I quite like magpies, especially their colours, which include black and sometimes a purple hue, which just happen to be my favourite colours.
I'm a bit of a magpie myself, in that I hoard/scrounge/acquire stuff that 'might prove useful'
One of my favourite armies of all time was the original WH40K Eldar Harlequins. My own force/troupe was called the magpiestear. The imagery I had in mind was a blend of the crying jester either with a magpie trapped in his tear or with the jester trapped within a tear of a magpie.
There's also the old rhyme 'one for sorrow...........', used to count magpies.
We have a pair of magpies visit our garden regularly as well, so it ties in with home.

So it was a blend of all the above I suppose, and I thought it sounded cool!!

[cobra]

Back in high school (or rather the danish equivalent: Gymnasium) in 1986 i was bored in a class once (that happened rather often in fact...) and doodled a snake wearing old wwii-style pilots goggles. I called him "Cobra-Kurt" and used him as a logo for a software project i was working on (with the "company name" Cobra Soft). Since then i have used the name Cobra for all computer and internet aliases and nicks. I even managed to get the nick for the BGG website.
If the name happens to be taken already in a forum/website/etc i join i usually add my year of birth to the nick - Cobra1967.

I still have the original drawing form 1986 somewhere and if i can find it in the chaos i call home i could scan it and try to make a paper mini out of it.

Thus my nick has nothing to do with my personality, name, hobby, location etc, but is simply a name i made up on an impulse.


/Cobra

[josedominguez]

Just shows you can't make assumptions...... sirrob, I'd never thought of Sir Rob, I'd assumed you were in Eastern Europe and it was your real name (having thought about it all of the Koalas should have been a clue, nevere mind location: Australia).

And Magpiestear.... I'd been misreading it as Magpie star, assumed it was linked to Newcastle! (football mascot).

Weird how the mind works.

[darkmook]

I was on holiday in Spain and misread a festival poster featuring a band named Dark MooK, that I took to be some cool Spanish metal band before realising it was Dark MOOR. I still thought DARKMOOK was a cool name, and adopted it for various things including my Lucha Libre alter ego (I was really digging Mexican wrestling at the time).

When I started getting into the minis I thought I would dust it off as a screen name, and the rest is history...

[josedominguez]

I've got a friend we call Peanut, because he looks like Eminem only fatter.

[jabbro]

Mine is a conglomeration of my initials (JAB) and the first three letters of my last name. I found it made a good handle as most Johns and JohnBs were taken. When I was in college and I did an internship for some theme park in Florida, a couple of friends and I frequented the Adventurer's Club. Just for fun I tacked on Jones and It made a nice generic sounding adventuring character.

Jabbro Jones, adventurer extraordinaire. Made it sound like it could be related to some famous archeologist. Had nothing to do with the fact I was attached to some fedora I had gotten with my first art contest winnings in college.

[Floyd]

Floyd, not Floyd the Barber but

Pink Floyd.

My first BBS handle back in the mid-late 80's.

I'd say all-time Favorite band (with that much diversity in genres of music covered it's hard for them not to fit any mood)

I used to end a message post with Pink, but Floyd has a nicer ring to it.

It's funny how many of those handles I was mispronouncing in my mind. It was Magpiestir(pronounced like Hippstir) to me. And I like Marillion but didn't draw the connection... LOL.

Oh by the way,
which ones Pink...

~Floyd

[Parduz]

Oct 1, 2010 10:59:49 GMT -9 Floyd said:

Floyd, not Floyd the Barber but

Pink Floyd.

My first BBS handle back in the mid-late 80's.

I'd say all-time Favorite band (with that much diversity in genres of music covered it's hard for them not to fit any mood)

I used to end a message post with Pink, but Floyd has a nicer ring to it.

It's funny how many of those handles I was mispronouncing in my mind. It was Magpiestir(pronounced like Hippstir) to me. And I like Marillion but didn't draw the connection... LOL.

Oh by the way,
which ones Pink...

~Floyd

I really need english lessons...

[stevelortz]

It's whut mah mama called me! But when I served on a submarine, my nickname was "Leapin' Louis Lortz, the Lower Level Devil, Steely-Eyed Killer of the Deep".

When I was a kid, my brother and sisters elected me to be the dog, so sometimes they call me "Dog". My nieces and nephews call me "Uncle Dog".

My brother ran a sci-fi character called The 3-D Alien, whose super-power was to see EVERYTHING in 3-D. I was his Faithful Space-Dog Zot. So that's how I became Zot!, as I am called on the Fat Dragon boards. There, recently, I revealed my secret golden dragon identity as Zottozarphaxadzaphnathpayanayim Louieleviathanlionellee Lortz, Lord and Layer On of the Dicen Hoard, Tsupilluliuma III, second cousin of Fin Fang Foom!

Have fun!
Steve

[pblade]

Interesting tales, one and all.

My forum nom-de-plume arises from my fondness for renaissance faires, the SCA, and swords of all types.

The persona I adopted in those groups tended toward either a mercenary company, or as an individual sword-for-hire, at which I was reasonably successful. This led to dressing in finer clothes, of more & more, brighter and brighter colored as I went. (I actually won a duel thanks to the bright color of the fringe on my cloak once.) Naturally, this led to my being referred to as a "peacock" by my fellows.

So I was a "peacock" that sold his blade(s) where he would...and the rest is pretty obvious.

I actually used the full 'Peacockblade' nickname for a while, but it's a bit long to type, so I shortened it to what it is now.

- Pb

[nikloveland]

It has been a hoot to read all these. My wife and I really enjoyed the 'Mr. Useless' one. I was calling you M-Russels or something like that... It makes me wish I had some funny story for my nickname. Wait, my name is Nik... ok that was cheesy. But those really are a bunch of great posts.

Nik

[WaffleM]

I never had a nickname growing up- Matthew was always just shortened to Matt. When my older brother came to visit me at college he decided to tell all my friends that I actually had a nickname that I was too embarrassed to tell any of them- "Waffle". Unfortunately this backfired: nobody at college called me Waffle and I actually liked it. A waffle is like a pancake more interesting cousin!

The M got tacked on to make it sound like "Waffle 'em!" which would be my battle cry or team chant for my old halfling Blood Bowl team.

side note: All my halfling players were named after food- Pete Zuh, Clem Bake, Kareem Puff, etc. The Treemen on the team had names of actual trees- Arnold Crabapple, Washington Hawthorn, Douglas Fir, and one other that I can't remember...

[Mike H "Chugosh"]

I made up the name origionally for a character. He needed something sort of brutish sounding. Since that time, I've used the name for a troll, a Klingon and my handle on a lot of different boards and forums.

A similar story is true of my other handle, Galifestus (oft shortened to Fess). Not as sticky nor, seemingly, as unique.

So now, even at game conventions, I am Chugosh.

[labrat]

I'm laughing my butt off reading this thread.

I like them all but the one that really got my busting up was stevelortz. Those are quite the names.

As Nik says, I work in the lab at our community hospital doing lab tests. I work nightshift, and I thought labrat to be a fitting name.

Another name I sometimes use is sanityslave, because that's what I am. I do slave labor for Sanity Studios. It's slave labor, because Nik has a big whip with spikey bits of metal on the end, which he sometimes has to use to get me to do anything. That and I don't really make any money. But perhaps someday. It's amazing though how much more enjoyable things are when you do them for fun and not for money.

[sammo]

I've enjoyed reading this thread as well. My story is much less interesting....

When I was a kid everyone always called me Sammy, and as I grew up I thought it was too childish and insisted people call me Sam instead... well my friends and family just couldn't follow simple directions. So now it's Sammo. Pretty much all my friends and family call me that now, it's more like my name than anything else. It seems like even people I meet wind up picking it up from my other friends, I certainly don't introduce myself as Sammo.

It worked out okay, as it turns out (whether accidental or intentional) as Sam is my first name and mo is the first two letters of my last name, so it seems appropriate. Whenever I sign up for a forum or whatever I usually try sammo first and more often then not it's unused.

[docryder]

I created a Son of Ether for the WWGS fan club about 10 years ago. The character was an aspect of my personality that I like to accentuate (more friendly and outgoing).

[brynbrenainn]

My story is a version of Pblade's...

My 'persona name' in SCA when I was active was Bryn Brenainn. I liked it a lot and when I stopped SCA'ing I did not want to loose it, so it became my preferred name on the web.

The story behind the name is not at all as colourful as Pblades, but here goes;

I chose Bryn after Bryn Terfel, a very good opera singer.
And Brenainn means dark hair in some language on the English isles.
Welsh? Gaelic? Don't remember, sorry.

Edit:
'English Isles...?' - What the...

I meant of course Brittish Isles, where England is a part. Sorry.
I do actually know this, please don't spam me...

[tonsha]

I'm afraid mine's not very exciting at all. 'Tonsha' is simply an anagram of my surname: 'Ashton'. That's it really...

Still - I've enjoyed reading everyone else's stories!

DaveA

[Dryw the Harper]

Dryw the Harper is a name I took decades ago when I learned to play Celtic Harp and was part of the SCA (seems we have many SCA veterans in the forum). Dryw is short for my middle name Andrew (actually Andreas according to my Greek father as opposed to my English mother), and I played Harp so I became Dryw the Harper, a Celtic Bard from Ireland who was wandering the world seeing new and strange sights. I met my wife at a Pensic War and we've been together for twenty years, and even though we don't actively participate in the local SCA anymore, we still usually refer to each other by our SCA names to this day.

Dryw the Harper