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Screen Names

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Chip
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Joined: 12/31/1969

I'm just curious to know the origin for people's screen names. Why did you choose what you did? Any interesting stories behind them?

Chip

GeminiWeb
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Joined: 07/31/2008
Screen Names

Chip,

Back on the late 1980's, I started playing a play-by-mail game called Spiral Arm (which, by coincidence I have recently restarted after more than 10 years away from the game ... but is now play by e-mail).

The game involves 'hyperspace links' between star systems, which means that the star maps can tend to look a bit like a spider web of sorts. My star sign is Gemini, so I named my empire 'Gemini Web'.

So there you are ...

GeminiWeb

Zzzzz
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Joined: 06/20/2008
Screen Names

Work, designing games, playing games.......

Zzzzz......... (need sleep)

Scurra
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Joined: 09/11/2008
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I once (well, twice actually :) ran an long-winded role-playing campaign on a world with pseudo-latin names for the Gods - they turned up again in my Wheel of Time game.
When I was doing some research, I discovered that Scurra was the latin for a Jester. (It was originally the name for a noble's personal guard who were considered something of a joke, because it generally didn't involve a huge amount of work - and you can see how the word evolved...)
So I've been Scurra for quite some time.

[edit: oh yeah, what René says below is also true: people keep thinking that Scurra is a female name. Mind you, at least I don't have that problem with my "real" name :)]

zaiga
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Screen Names

Somewhere during the early nineties I participated in one of those fantasy play-by-mail games. I had a party with six characters in it and gave each of those characters an alliterative name, appropriate for that character's race and class. For example, I named the dwarven fighter Bolbor Bloodbutcher, the human priest was called Dwayne the Devout, etc. I also had an elven mage and needed to come up with a cool name for that character.

The first time I heard the phrase "weave my spell" in the Queen song "Brighton Rock" I thought it was a really cool phrase. So, for the elven mage, I came up with "Spellweaver". I put "Zaigamor" in front of that, I just made it up, and it sounded really cool, mysterious and fantasy-pulp like: "Zaigamor Spellweaver", even though it wasn't truly alliterative.

A year later or so I got into the tracking scene. "Tracking" is the art of making music from a bunch of digital samples. Maybe some of you remember those .mod or .s3m files. Of course, I needed to sign my music files with a cool nick and I chose "Zaigamor Spellweaver" for my first few tunes. It turned out that nobody, except myself, was able to remember this name fully, let alone spell it correctly, so later I shortened it to "Zaigamor".

Now it happened that in those days I was chatting a lot with Danish people in one of those old school telnet chatboxes. I used my nick "Zaigamor" in those chats. The problem was that "Mor" means mother in Danish, so a lot of people thought I was a female! This prompted me to shorten my nick even further to: "Zaiga". This worked well for the Danish. However, now a lot of other people think I'm female, because "Zaiga" ends with an "a". Also, "Zaiga" appears to be a Latvian female name! To obscure matters even further my real name is "René" which is also a bit ambiguous on the male/female front (hint: René is male, Renée is female). Rest assured that I am really a male (at least, the last time I checked I was!).

The problem is that I'm a bit stuck with this name, because I've used it for so long and in so many places that changing it would cause more trouble than it would solve! :)

That is, in short, the story behind my nick name.

- René Wiersma

rkalajian
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Screen Names

I have no idea how I came up with mine.

-Robert C. Kalajian Jr.

PS: On some sites I go as Naijalak...no way related to how my last name is spelled backwards...hrm

phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
I'll step in....

Back in the 80's I did a lot of BBSes when I was a wee boy... I chose the screen name Pale Rider after a Clint Eastwood movie by the same name (which to me was basically a remake of the Eastwood classic High Plains Drifter, although a tad less violent). In college we had access to IRC, so I needed a screen name for that. The old Pale Rider nickname wasn't really working for me because it turned out few people had seen the movie. So I decided to try something completely different but noticeably similar (I'm a sucker for Western Movies). In one of my political science classes in college, we learned the term dark horse candidate, which is basically a political candidate who is not expected to win, I.E. an under dog. I immediately grabbed onto this term with both hands... The only problem was the name was already registered on IRC. So I got creative and made it one word (darkhorse); still taken. So I decided to use the 'english spelling' (don't shoot me Brits) and add an extraneous e to the end of dark to make it darke. This name was not taken, and the rest, they say, is history. Oddly enough I have checked my online presence a few times to find that at least one other person has used the exact same spelling as I did for their screen name.

-Darke

Anonymous
Screen Names

My screen name should seem blatently obvious, but my d/b/a name might not, and since you asked...(a friend once gave me good advice: "Never ask a question you don't want to know the answer to")

Back in high school a couple of bored friends and I decided to come up with fictitious countries. Why? I dunno, there wasn't much to do, and it was a creative outlet. For the name of my country, I took my initials - MED - and then just made up the remainder of what I thought sounded like a decent national name, resulting in "Medania". The d/b/a, then, is an obvious extension.

Now, how I derived the national flag of Medania (which I use as my corporate trademark), is another story... ;)

IngredientX
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I'm afraid my story isn't as interesting as any of the others, especially zaiga's or rkalajian's. :)

"IngredientX" just popped into my head one day. Seemed like an interesting screen name.

rkalajian
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Screen Names

I am interesting damnit!

Joe_Huber
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Screen Names

I've always preferred screen names that readily identify the user's name, rather than a nickname. By choice, I prefer to call people by their name, and it's a whole lot easier to remember that FastLearner is Matthew if his screen name is MFrederick or MatthewF or the like.

So I follow my own preference; my screen names everywhere are variants on Joe Huber.

Scurra
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Joe_Huber wrote:
I've always preferred screen names that readily identify the user's name, rather than a nickname.

That's reasonably OK when your name is not easily confused with anything else. My real name is "David Brain" - and you'd be amazed (no, you probably wouldn't!) at how many people read my surname as "Brian".

(I once went to a conference and the name badge said "David Brian" on it. So I said to the woman at the desk that they'd got my name wrong, it was "Brain". So she went away, and came back with a badge that read "Brian Brain". Hmmm...)

-- David
(p.s. so curse you, Mr "Games on the Brain", because I already have :-)

FastLearner
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Screen Names

I used to have a fairly high profile position in a public company that received quite a lot of media attention. As such our marketing/publicity folks didn't really like me or other high-profile employees to use their real names on hobby boards (or even on tech boards, really), so I came up with a screen name. I chose Fast Learner both because I'm a fast learner (I win better than 50% of the games I play if we're all learning it for the first time, though I'm a slow to come up with further strategies so my percentage rapidly plummets on additional playings) and because it makes for great irony sometimes.

Here I'd rather be MatthewF, but it's too late.

Note, Joe, that you undoubtedly have a lot more luck on the jmhuber and such names, as Huber is a much less common name than Frederick. I tend to find that most of the variations of my first and last name are taken unless the site is new.

-- Matthew

Anonymous
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FastLearner wrote:
I tend to find that most of the variations of my first and last name are taken unless the site is new.

You just need to get more creative! How about "Matterick Fredhew"? ;)

Torrent
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Torrent comes from an anime, Ronin Warriors. The water-aligned character's armor is named Torrent. I'm a big fan of storms and such, so it fit. I started using it on MUSHs in the 90's. It is uncommon enough not to be taken in most places. Now I use it so many places that it is just real easy to type.

Andy

Joe_Huber
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FastLearner wrote:
Note, Joe, that you undoubtedly have a lot more luck on the jmhuber and such names, as Huber is a much less common name than Frederick. I tend to find that most of the variations of my first and last name are taken unless the site is new.

Hmmm... to be honest I've never though of Frederick as a particularly common surname.

And, on doing the research, it isn't really much more common than Huber - Frederick ranked as the 879th most common surname in the US in 1990, Huber 987th. And since Joseph and Matthew are both among the most common given names - well, it certainly explains why at anything resembling a popular site I have to throw the M in...

FastLearner
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Joe_Huber wrote:
Hmmm... to be honest I've never though of Frederick as a particularly common surname.

And, on doing the research, it isn't really much more common than Huber - Frederick ranked as the 879th most common surname in the US in 1990, Huber 987th. And since Joseph and Matthew are both among the most common given names - well, it certainly explains why at anything resembling a popular site I have to throw the M in...

Right, but Frederick is also a first name and middle name, unlike Huber. As a result if you google "matthew frederick" you will get some people with that name (sometimes me), and tons of people named things like "Matthew Frederick Robinson" and such, and there are lots of "M. Frederick Davis" and "Frederick Matthews" names and that kind of thing. It's not that common of a last name, but when you add in the first and middle name combos my choices tend to be more limited.

(In fact I have all kinds of awards and such from grade school and the like where I'm credited as "Frederick Matthews," and am called "Fred" by people who don't know me all the time. When someone asks my name, last name first, and I begin with Frederick they invariably correct me.)

-- Matthew

Fos
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Hmm...

First I was given a name with which to sign code. The name was a combination of my last name and a few other letters and numbers. Turned out that the name was actually pronouncable, so I abbreviated it and took it online. So, "Fos." A lot of history for nothing very interesting.

sedjtroll
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My name is Seth Edward Jaffee, and my dad used to sometimes call me sej. On IRC I'm simply sej, not sedjtroll. However I played Magic a LOT, and there's a Magic card called Sedge Troll.

I'm not really a huge fan of that card, and especially not the art on it, but the nick sejtroll was amusing enough a fit that I wanted to use it. However, believe it or not, it was taken on Yahoo, so I added the d.

Since I don't play magic anymore (unfortunately) and since a lot of people don't know what the hell a Sedge Troll is, and if they did they wouldn't be impressed anyway, I'm thinking of wholesale switching to sejaffee which sounds like a stock nick (since it's my first two initials and my last name), but coincidentally I'm about to get my SE license so it's a double fit. Plus it gets the word troll out of there, which is probably best for professional life (though cute for internet life, as I sometimes troll message boards to some extent).

- Seth

setarcos
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Joined: 07/31/2008
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You want to know how naïve I can be? I actually thought Setarcos would be unique... until I Googled it and found out there are hundreds of them out there in cyberland.

ensor
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Joined: 08/23/2008
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ensor comes from the TMBG song "Meet James Ensor." I don't remember when I first started using it as my online handle, must have been back in college, looking for a rare enough name that I wouldn't have to be richm256.

phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
That's Ok...

Setarcos wrote:
You want to know how naïve I can be? I actually thought Setarcos would be unique... until I Googled it and found out there are hundreds of them out there in cyberland.
That's OK.. It took me over a year to figure out your nick name, so don't feel bad..

-Darke

jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Re: That's Ok...

Darkehorse wrote:
Setarcos wrote:
You want to know how naïve I can be? I actually thought Setarcos would be unique... until I Googled it and found out there are hundreds of them out there in cyberland.
That's OK.. It took me over a year to figure out your nick name, so don't feel bad..

Hey, I only just got it! Cute! Now, "DanogNellows", on the other hand, I got much more quickly, though I confess I find it rather less clever.

For myself, just to add to the thread, I use "jwarrend" because it's the same screenname as my email address, for simplicity. In retrospect, since my last name is "Warrender" and not "Warrend", this was a rather poor choice. Oh well.

Joe_Huber
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FastLearner wrote:
Right, but Frederick is also a first name and middle name, unlike Huber.

OK, makes sense. Though I do actually know someone whose middle name is Huber, and not a single person whose middle name I know to be Frederick, so perhaps it wasn't surprising I didn't consider this...

dr_Edge69
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Joined: 12/31/1969
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My nickname is easy to explained, first i always dreamed to be called Doctor.

Edge is a shaving cream company, because at the time my head was shaved.

69 is a cardgame, i think that my girlfriend always ask me to play, i never tried it though... i heard it was complicated but fun :)

Anonymous
Screen Names

well, I'm a newbie here, but I'll give this a go...

Back in '97, I signed up for a trial AOL account. After trying "hip, digital-sounding" nicks based on my name, I came up dry. So, I harkened (hearkened?) back to my youth and tapped into one of my favorite cartoon characters from the '70's. I combined it with my name, and the rest is history (well, for me it is, anyhow): my online "persona" was born.

I'm new here, but I started in online forums on the MacAddict forums. I then started a few interest-based communities myself. With the exception of one place (not one of the sites I started), I'm...CaptKevMan.

Anonymous
Screen Names

Way back in '92, when I first started on internet message boards, I called myself Stanley Spadowski (from Weird Al's movie, UHF). That, of course, was too long, so I searched for a long time and settle on Zozula, from a book called the Celestial Steam Locomotive. That was all fine and good, until one day I signed up for a new BBS and that name was taken. I went through several names quickly, and decided I wanted something no one else would ever possibly use.

I had written a story in high school where I "invented" the character Trunkle Bob (more accurately, it was my pitiful attempt to emulate Doug Adams), and chose that name. It was a good choice, for the most part. Because of the Bob part, everybody assumes I'm male (which I am), and that name is never taken when I sign up for something new. The only downside is that my name is Tony, but everybody assumes its Bob.

Anonymous
Screen Names

Snipy3 and Spiffy, my two beloved screen names...

Snipy3 -
I purchased Time Splitters 2 for the gamecube, it's a first person shooter game. Anyway I needed a screen name for the game and since everytime you killed someone it would say "Killed by ----" I didn't want it to say killed by Aaron. I thought how lame. So I came up with Snipy, and wanted a number so I slammed 3 on there. I since have used it on just about everything.

In the rare occasion someone already is snipy3 on a site, I use my other name:

Spiffy -
I'm not quite sure how I got this one. I think people started to use adjectives to describe themselves, and I picked Spiffy.

sedjtroll
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dr_Edge69 wrote:
69 is a cardgame, i think that my girlfriend always ask me to play, i never tried it though...

Um... I don't think it's a card game, perse. If your girlfriend wants you to try it though then go for it... you'll like it!

:)

Apologies for innuendo and adult humor.

zaiga
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sedjtroll wrote:
dr_Edge69 wrote:
69 is a cardgame, i think that my girlfriend always ask me to play, i never tried it though...

Um... I don't think it's a card game, perse. If your girlfriend wants you to try it though then go for it... you'll like it!

I think it's more of an activity than a game, but the same can be said of "Mystery of the Abbey"... Uh, not sure what I'm trying to say here.

Anyway, isn't kind of funny that dr_edge69 now has exactly 69 posts? Does that mean he will now stop posting?

Oracle
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zaiga wrote:
Anyway, isn't kind of funny that dr_edge69 now has exactly 69 posts? Does that mean he will now stop posting?

That would mean I have a long way to go before I get to the number I usually put after my name when it's taken. 1729 -- it's the smallest positive number that can be expressed as the sum of 2 different cubes 2 different ways.

Jason

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