Origin of Usernames

[ThirdGen]

Guess.

 

Umm... are you a Breck girl?

[Ookla the Absent]

Umm... are you a Breck girl?

???

Apparently not.

[Amanuensis]

When attempting to come up with a name for a reoccurring character in the various fantasy roleplays I GMed back in my freshman year of highschool, I had been dating my then believed soul mate Amber for several years. So I took the first two letters of both her name and my name (Micheal) and the four letters of love, and rearranged them all to create Alvom and Mei (husband and wife). For the surname I just took the first three letters of my own surname followed by the last three letters of hers.

Being a hopeless romantic, a lot of my relationships have bled similarly into my writings (for example, I once had an AI character whose name was a string of numbers that also happened to be the day we began dating).

Edited August 25, 2015 by Alvom Halbin

[ThirdGen]

???

Apparently not.

 

 

That was obscure, yeah.  From the modeling agency scene in The Brady Bunch Movie:

Marsha: Who are you modeling for?

Model: Guess.

Marsha: Umm... are you a Breck girl?

Model: No, Guess Jeans.

Marsha: Uhh, Levi's?  Wrangler?  Osh Kosh B'Gosh?

(model gets annoyed and leaves)

[AndrewStirlingMacDonald]

Mine is my name. I started using my full name a few years back. There were already some known "Andrew MacDonalds" out and about (the producer of Danny Boyle's early films like 28 Days Later and Trainspotting, a skateboarder, a hockey player) and I love my middle name anyway, so I went with it. Now I introduce myself with all three names. Between that, the giant beard and the kilts, people tend to remember me.

[RippleGylf]

My username is a combination of two previous usernames.

 

Eons ago, a fair lady, aging around 13 years old, joined a forum about the Warriors series. While she may have been lacking in literary taste at the time, the series was very important to her, and so she crafted a suitable warrior name, it being Ripplestream. 

 

Around that time, she became involved in a gaming community with high standards. For online purposes, she went under the guise of Gylfie, an elf owl in the book series The Guardians of Ga'hoole by Kathryn Lasky. (To this day, she still thinks the movie wrecked the entire plot.) 

 

To make a deviant.art account, she felt that she must blend these two identities, and so RippleGylf was born. Little did she know that she may have chosen a different one if she had realized no one would be able to spell it off-hand.

 

And that's basically it.

[maxal]

I have sincerely lost count as to how many nicknames I have used in the past years.... Maxal is the latest one... I was looking for yet *another* username when I did one of the cheesiest thing ever: I combined the names of my children into a name 

 

Max comes from my son. Al comes from my daughter. *Originality* 

 

I tend not to use the same nickname too often. 

[Mailliw73]

Way back when young me started getting accounts on websites, I did the easiest thing and flipped my name around and bam! Mailliw. Add my then two favorite numbers, 7 and 3, and Mailliw73 was born. I haven't ever really used anything else, I just got so used to it.

[the winter system]

Winter Cloud sounds cool. 

[Left]

I switch my name around quite a bit and have explained my previous ones before. ScottLeft comes from me using the name I've started going by in real life, and semi cleverly combining it into a part of my username that's stuck around for a while.

[+Slowswift]

Choosing an online name has always been both my favorite and least favorite part of signing up for things. I absolutely adore creating characters and things... but can never come up with a good name. Ever.

So... if you've ever seen my username history (and if you haven't, please don't. The shame is too much), you'll know that this time 'round was no exception.

I had fallen inactive after first signing up (I was Lord Mistborn back then, if you're wondering), and upon my return found my username... not my favorite.

So I set about finding a new one. I settled upon lizard-crab-thing (don't judge), because Hoid's interaction with one at the end of WoR was hilarious.

Eventually I ended up as Slowswift, he being one of my favorite characters from Mistborn. And 'cause, you know, Tolkien.

I still haven't found a satisfactory username for elsewhere, though. TheOtherKholin is my current preference. That one brother they don't talk about, and all.

WoK Prime spoilers:

Though, now that I think about it, there was that one brother who died in battle or some such. So we'll go with that.

Edited August 26, 2015 by Slowswift

[Blue Skies]

My name is partly to do with my interest in Fate Stay Night as Avalon Blue is the name of an ending song. But I have my own work and the main character is named Avalon. Bit of a mix mostly to do with my book idea though.

[kaellok]

I was creating a character for Everquest 16 years ago or so, a frog paladin. I was also watching Titan A.E. i really liked the name of the main character, Cayle, but it was taken. So were the variants i tried. Then i was like, "hey, EQ calls them frogloks." So i tried combining words that sounded like Cayle but ended in lok. And I've been using Kaellok as my user name ever since.

[Jondesu]

I like Japanese (and liked it even more the first time I used Jondesu as a username), and it basically is the simple way to respond to "What's your name?" or "Who are you?", since my name is Jon.  I'd simply reply "Jon desu", or "Watashi wa Jon desu", so it became my username for many places.

 

jW

[Haelbarde]

You know how when you're a kid, you roleplay/collaboratively tell stories and such like? How sometimes its something completely created by those involved, and othertimes it's in some other universe. Well, my peer group was into Yugioh, and started telling one such story, and everyone had their own character. Now, at the time, I had a Warrior deck, and so I made my character around that, so the stupid arm card player things that they had, my character's was also a sword. That character's name was Dean Haelbarde, the Haelbarde coming from Halberd/Hallebard - spears with an axehead on top. Then I just started using that as my username on things. And so here we are. Glaives are cooler though...

Edited September 4, 2015 by Haelbarde

[Surgebound Rainspren]

My username is from a combination of two things. 

I always pictured Rainspren as the cutest spren and the image of one flying through the sky was pleasing to me.

Also its similar in layout to the username name I use for non-17shard stuff  (SentientBowtie). Notice the same Adjective followed by noun layout.

[Ookla the Absent]

Glaives are cooler though...

[Kaymyth]

Well, I wanted to have a username that would be unique enough that I could use it everywhere without having to worry about it being taken.  And it worked - I've been using this handle all over the internet for somewhere around a decade-and-a-half, and I've never seen anyone else using it.

 

The only real hallmark that shows that I created it in my young adulthood is the 'th' ending; I've been a lifelong Pern fan, and I was still in a semi-obsessed stage with it, so I wanted something dragony.  Because dragons were cool.

 

 

Dragons are still cool.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Kaymyth

[mallamp]

My username is the lamest possible.. It's made by merging my real first and last names, and adding some letters to add fantasy feel, and as I look back, it didn't even succeed particularly well, but I'm kinda stuck with it (I originally made it for D&D or some game, not sure which was first)....

Edited September 27, 2015 by mallamp

[Sera]

I needed an username and I like how it sounds (Italian: SEHra).

Amusingly, this word/spelling exists in various languages. I knew some of its meanings, and just found out it can be... Evening, 'will be', greenhouse, stove, serum, wax, mountain, padlock.

Hello,  I'm a stove!

[Zathoth]

It is a Lovecraftian god style name. He had Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth so Morzathoth. At least I didnt name myself completely unpronounceable like Cthulhu.

[nicocoberru]

Um... all your usernames are so well-thought I'm actually embarrassed with mine. My name is Nicole. XD

[Bort]

About 15 years ago, my flatmates and I were sitting watching an episode of the Simpsons. It was the Itchy and Scratchy Land episode, where a big thing is made about the name Bort.

 

At the time, I was the only one among our friends who didn't have a nickname, and the conversation had turned to nicknames whicle we were watching TV. Since I didn't have a nickname at the time, my friends decided I would henceforth be called Bort, then spent three weeks making sure everyone I knew remembered.

 

I've been Bort ever since.

[Amrynn]

I, like Slowswift always have the issue of thinking of a name. I've always really liked a certain weird, nearly indescribable naming pattern/scheme that is somewhat eleven and generally fantasy-sounding. To confusedly summarize, it uses a lot of "y's" and double consonants. (As a result, many of Brandon's spellings from Wok and Wor were satisfying to me)
    To get back on track, I'd used the name "Amrynn" as a name for any sort of mage character that I made, and liked the sound of it, making it my default name in pretty much everything.
    Along the same lines, I named my defaulted thief-class character in some long-ago RPG "Lyre" because it sounds somewhat feminine and, when pronounced, sounds like "lier," fitting the thief theme. So, eventually, Lyre became my default female character name, though I haven't used it on 17th Shard yet.

[Burnt Spaghetti]

Well... When I originally came up with this username, I was coming up with a group/ clan name for me and a friend for Battlefield Heroes (cartoon Battlefield that you play in a browser. Quite an amusing variant). I wanted the name to be around something that both of us liked. The first thing I thought of was Spaghetti... Yup. 

But it's a Battlefield game. You can't just be called 'Clan Spaghetti' now can you. Its a game with funny fire-fights. Oh wait. FIRE.  Add fire to spaghetti and.... you get Burnt Spaghetti!

 

But then we got sick of the game and so the clan name was never used. So I adopted it as a profile name. Had it for years now.