Where does your user-name come from?

[sorvan76]

I mean specifically for this forum?

Mine comes from my favourite character, whom I had the priveledge of playing for about 15 years! His name was Sorvan, who started his career as a Thief in 2nd Ed. AD&D. He had an intelligence of 17, which allowed him to dual class into a mage, and that's when he really came into his own!

How about all the rest of you? :D

[Oberoten]

Oberoten is old russ and means "shapeshifter" a good name for a GM I thought.

[Moon Wizard]

Mine goes back to when I made my first handle at 10 years old. I wanted Blue Wizard or something like that. This was the first “wizard” I could find that wasn’t already taken. :)

JPG

[Wintermute]

One of my all time favorite books. Wintermute was one of two AIs in William Gibson's novel, Neuromancer. Wintermute's goal was to get around the "Turing Locks" that prevented it from getting smarter and merging with the other AI.

[Zacchaeus]

I was an Inspector of Taxes and needed a handle back in the early days of the internet. Zacchaeus was a biblical tax collector so it seemed a natural fit.

[Kelrugem]

My all time favorite character is a dwarven fighter/leader besides my kobold bard Deekin (copied from Neverwinter Nights). The first time I made that character (around 12 years ago maybe, so I was around 14; was for Lord of the Rings Online) I used a random name generator and Kelrugem was its answer :) Yes, not such an epic background but I really like that name and it seems to be a rare used name such that it is easy to use that name in online games and forums :)

[Ampersandrew]

My given name is Andrew. Two syllables And & Ru.

I was being clever and started writing it as two characters &る

That's an ampersand an a ru (Kana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ru_(kana))

One of my friends asked my why I was calling myself ampersandrew.

He was taking the piss but I liked it, now I use it a lot.

When I started contracting, I called my company Ampersand Engineering Ltd.

The corporate logo is an ampersand and a ru.

[dulux-oz]

My real name is Matthew Black, which gets shortened to Matt Black quite a bit. Down here in Australia there is a brand of general house paint called Dulux. One day (years ago) one of my friends started calling me Dulux. For about 3 months I couldn't work out why, until one day I was doing some minuture painting and as I reached for a pot of black I realised that the actual colour in the pot was - Matt Black. :) The nickname stuck.

When I first got on the net in the mid 1980s (at University) I needed a handle, as as most people knew my nickname it seemed obviouse to use a handle of Dulux-Oz.

And since its a related topic: The saying in my signature is a bit of a Math joke. My first degree is in Mathematics and Computer Science, so I'm a bit of a geek - an "Alpha-Geek" as in "Alpha-Male". But the joke goes like this: √(-1) is the meaning of the mathematical symbol "i"; 2^3 is 2 times 2 times 2, which equals 8; Σ is the greek letter sigma, which in mathematics means "sum of" or "to sum" or simply "sum"; and Π is the greek letter pi, which we all know is the "ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumfrance" - or, putting it all together "i 8 sum pi" - "I ate some pie... and it was delicious!" :D

So where does your sig come froim (if its not obvious)?

[Blahness98]

Depends on the handle.. Blahness98 was born in 1998 because I in a blah mood when i was making a handle for AIM. Just stuck from there. I keep getting crap from my friends whenever I use this one when we do LAN parties.

My other handle, TurboGuy16, I have has since I was 12. No real reason behind this name, as my 12 year old mind was just putting random words together with a number. But I have since kept the handle since it was the first one I created and it does have sentimental value. And being able to use the Turboman avatar fron Mega Man 7 kinda makes it fun now. My buddies don't give me crap about this one.

And the last handle I go by, ArchAngel, was from high school when I was fascinated by religous iconography. This transferred into a Counterstike Clan (Clan Triad) where TurboGuy wasn't really fitting with the company the clan kept, so ArchAngel took over and really stepped up in the clan even though I was an HPW.

Over the course of the years, these three handles have been my mainstays.

[damned]

Playing Barren Reams Elite on bulletin boards in the 80s I used some ascii derivative of damnation, short for Damian's Nation, and in the enduring Australian tradition of shortening all diminutives it got shortened again to damned

[Nylanfs]

Mine (which I use everywhere possible) comes from the main character from the first few books of the Recluse, and Descent: FreeSpace which was the first multiplayer game I needed a handle for. :)

[Gwydion]

When I first was introduced to AD&D by a friend in the early 80's I was reading the Chronicles of Prydain. I really enjoyed the character Prince Gwydion Son of Don. Given my first official character in AD&D was a paladin, Lord Gwydion (and most places now just "Gwydion") was born....

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

Mine looks kind of like a combination of a binary code, a barcode and "lol" over and over again. Also, it's rarely in use on any other website.... I've had to bastardize it a little in some cases (add either more l's or 0's), but it generally it's the same everywhere. I like the way that it gives no information about me other than that i may possibly be into sci-fi stuff. The fun thing is when i've audibly talked to anyone that only knows me as that "name", listening to them try to pronounce it is always fun... i let them off the hook pretty quickly though.

[Nylanfs]

Or that you are an AI that is using it ironically. :)

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

Or that you are an AI that is using it ironically. :)

:chuckles numerically:
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

[Callum]

Mine is the name of the character that I played for many years at live role-play events such as The Gathering, here in the UK - Callum McLuny, the Orange Mage.

[Ardem]

My real name is Adam, however when I was very young we lived next door to Austrian neighbours.

They used to call me little Ardem, It was Adam with an austrian/german inflections. So used it in my first rpg ans stuck with it ever since.

[Notsag]

Its my real name, just backwards, i know, im a freaking genius!

[Xemit]

I started playing AD&D in high school during lunch back in 1980. Was playing an Elven wizard and needed a name. Looked at my watch and reversed the letter order, thought it sounded appropriate. Have used it as my gamer tag ever since. If the tag has already been taken when starting a new game, I just modify it, such as Lord Xemit.

[Culdraug]

When my group first started playing Rolemaster, the gm handed us the Silmarillion from Tolkien and we created names from it. Cul means red and Draug means wolf.

[Bidmaron]

Mine comes from one of the 4 main characters in a novel I wrote (He is a ranger).

[GavinRuneblade]

Mine was a character I made for a one-off 3rd edition D&D playtest session, and re-used for a character in the MMO City of Heroes (https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php) (Fire armor, dual blades tanker if you know the game). I liked Gavin because of a joke from the webcomic Nukees (https://nukees.com/) where one of the main characters is nicknamed Gav short for Gavin, but then his initials are also G. A. V. prompting the comment "Gav, your name is Gav!" I totally forget where the Runeblade portion came from, I think I just thought it sounded cool.

Interestingly, I am the only user of this handle that comes up in any internet search I've done, which I enjoy. Though searches do put out other close matches that aren't me (like Shangrur Runeblade's facebook page, which has no relation to me).

I don't use it on forums anymore but I used to have a signature line to go with the name "I'm not as omniscient as I thought (https://www.thecaperadio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11001&start=30)", (warning, that site will toss out an expired certificate security error) which was a quote I made while playing one of the Master of Orion games. There was a psychic race that gets an ability "omniscient" that lets them scout the whole galaxy instantly and see cloaked enemy warships. But there's still a ton of stuff hidden from them. When I discovered this one of my friends was in the room and we were laughing about what I couldn't see and I thought the one thing an omniscient entity ought to know is whether or not they actually are omniscient. Which clearly, I didn't. Hence the joke and the sig.

[Blackwolf]

I could tell you but I think it would be better for you to watch this if you know who Blackwolf is then you have seen it before and are One of the Old School. movie Wizards (1977) as you can tell by the date many of you weren't around then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcnQ7Dlk_Ks

[johnkuy]

Hello! My name comes from my real name(John) and plus "kuy"(I don't know why, it just came up in my head).

[GavinRuneblade]

I could tell you but I think it would be better for you to watch this if you know who Blackwolf is then you have seen it before and are One of the Old School. movie Wizards (1977) as you can tell by the date many of you weren't around then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcnQ7Dlk_Ks

Fritz! Fritz, get up for God's sake! Get up! They've killed Fritz! They've killed Fritz! Those lousy stinking yellow fairies! Those horrible atrocity-filled vermin! Those despicable animal warmongers! They've killed Fritz! Take that! Take this! Take that, you green slime! You black hearted, short, bow-legged...

[Historiker]

I have a degree in History and speak a little German so I use the German word for Historian.

[Myrdin Potter]

Myrdin is the name of my first long term D&D Paladin from when I started when I was 11 or 12. I was reading the first Andre Norton Witch World book and Merlin was in it with his name spelled the Welsh way - Myrddin. I did not know that dd was pronounced "th" and threw out the extra d and named my Paladin Myrdin the Just. When I joined the SCA when I was 18, that became my SCA name and there I am Sir Myrdin the Just. I typically use my real name for online forums (I am Michael in Anandtech.com. for example), so when I started playing Eve Online, I named my character Myrdin Potter to be a mix of the two. Since I have been using Myrdin for so long, I actually will respond to it. I pronounce it Mire-din or "mud" "noise" or Mired-in as in stuck. The Potter is just my real last name.

[leozelig]

An informal version of Leonard Zelig, aka the human chameleon (some would say the ultimate conformist), a character in a film that amused me once. Not an endorsement of the filmmaker. My avatar is the expert necromancer Doctor Byron Orpheus. In hindsight, Orpheus is a much better username.

[OneSidedDie]

Mine is a sort of joke for the Earthdawn RPG.

It is a theoretical cross section of two basic rules in the game: exploding dice and the rule of one

Exploding dice: On an open ended roll if you roll the maximum value on a die you keep the result and get to roll it again. If you roll the maximum again you get to keep rolling.
Rule of one: If all of the dice results are all 1s the attempt fails, no matter if you reached the target number or not.

Rolling a one sided die in Earthdawn would give you an infinite result but you would still fail because they would still be all 1s.

Just makes me chuckle.

[Morik]

Mine is from my main Star Wars Galaxies character.

[mac40k]

Mac is a childhood nickname. I have been into the table top miniatures game Warhammer 40,000 since it first came out in '87 and up until 5 years ago, I had 16 armies for it.

[Hector Trelane]

Good thread. I feel as I'm peering deep into everyone's soul here...


I mean specifically for this forum?

Mine comes from my favourite character

Mine too. Longtime World of Darkness character...

[Dark Lord Galen]

Dark Lord Galen is a nod to my first D&D Character I created as a player back in 1979 1e days. He didn't start off being "dark" but as we were all "murder hobos" in the day and my fellow adventurers tossed me to the foes to save themselves. All those many years ago they thought me dead, but in the dark he prevailed and now as a DM he has slowly become a nemesis to be feared in the same campaign now 40 years in the making.

[dulux-oz]

Moderator:

Moved 4 (Unrelated to this Topic) Post over to a new Thread: Tolkien-Etymology (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?52301-Tolkien-Etymology&p=464107) - sort of on an indirect request from @Bidmaron :)

Cheers

[Dr0W]

Back in the day I played on a rp private Ultima Online shard and there I loved the dark elves, but it wasn't the reason for my nickname.

Back in the day I also played counter strike in a lan house and me and my friends cared about our rankings and that kind of stuff. We used different nicknames to warm up until we logged with our real nicknames so our stats wouldn't get messed. One day I logged with a random nick to warm up, it was "Drow". On that day I played so well that the nickname Drow statistics were far better than my previous nickname (Which I can't even remember). From that day I started using Drow as a nick name, but when we entered a tournament my clan mates wanted me to have it "l33t", and they came up with "Dr0W". We won that tournament, and it's like that ever since.

[YAKO SOMEDAKY]

My nickname came a long time ago when I and a group of friends got together to create characters for a cyberpunk 2020 adventure, the book was new, we were all excited, while the characters were created the television was on and it was passing Animaniacs, here it is that a friend turns and says our Bruno this guy is crazy just like you, what's his name ... oh I think it's Yako ..
It's ok! my character's name will be Yako ...
And 2020 I don't need to say why, right?

[dmiiceuk]

It comes from my childhood - my brother called me this way.

[Griogre]

I was running a 12th-13th level AD&D adventure with very experienced players and I needed a monster to challenge them but not kill them. The players had all the monster books memorized, so I decided to create one myself. And so the Griogre was born, a tribute to the owlbear - half grizzly bear, half ogre - created by the stereotypical mad wizard which actually fit well into the adventure. Since it's a made up monster name I can almost always get it as a user name.

[Callum]

I was running a 12th-13th level AD&D adventure with very experienced players and I needed a monster to challenge them but not kill them. The players had all the monster books memorized, so I decided to create one myself. And so the Griogre was born, a tribute to the owlbear - half grizzly bear, half ogre - created by the stereotypical mad wizard which actually fit well into the adventure. Since it's a made up monster name I can almost always get it as a user name.

That's great! I always wondered if the name was a variation on Magic's gray ogre (https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=204)...

[Mourngrimm]

Mourngrimm is one of two surviving characters I created back in 1978 for D&D. He has been a character of mine in every edition of D&D as well as being my main toon in WoW for many years.

[TheoGeek]

TheoGeek = "Theo" from theology because I love God and love studying about Him, and "Geek" ... well ... Hi, my name is Jeff, and I 'm a geek. :)

[Herdan]

From an early David Weber series. Emperor Herdan was a warship (well... Planetoid). Interesting to see him still develop those early ideas

TTFN and take care

[MooCow]

When human younglings are very small, their guardians teach them what sounds farm animals make when they're not stressed or in pain. Then, in order for the younglings to associate the animal names with the noises, their guardians teach create little compound words of the two. I don't know if that story is true, but that's what I've heard anyway.

[Beemanpat]

People call me Beemanpat because I'm a beekeeper and my name is Patrick.

[k410]

My first initial and a d1000.

[Sir Tawmis]

I'd always just used my name (Tawmis) - but one day, when I got an XBOX One I was having trouble getting my gamer tag converted from XBOX to XBOX ONE, so I called XBOX Technical support.
And the gentleman on the other line kept calling me "Sir Tawmis" ("Thank you for your patience, Sir Tawmis", "Sure, let me look into that, Sir Tawmis", "I think I see the issue, Sir Tawmis", etc etc).
I kept saying, "You can just call me Tawmis."
And he'd say, "Understood, Sir Tawmis."
So when in the end, there was no way to get my regular UID ported over - I made my XBOX One handle, "Sir Tawmis"... and then just began using it on forums too.
Previously used to use "Adam-X" (a favorite comic book character of mine) and dating way back on the BBS Days I used "Hugh the Hand" (bonus points to anyone who knows where the name comes from) - said name was the inspiration of my own BBS called "The Nexus BBS"

[Doswelk]

Mine was username at my first it job back in 1990s Savage got added when the now defunct Savage Worlds online web site started up, I got my avatar from that site too.

[Mytherus]

Wish my story was more original but my name is from a world of warcraft character i made years ago and just liked it. I still have a character named this but its a different character...i deleted the original guy...

[ruedas]

Mine is Spanish for "wheels" because I spent most of my life on 2 of them.

[Coffers]

Mine goes back to the early 1990's when my company set up some of us on Compuserve, I was asked for a nickname to use, and as at the time I had a hacking cough and was calming it with Cough Sweets I suggested Coffdrop. I carried the nickname on to various sites, blogs and forums. In later years other users shortened it to Coffers. The name has stuck.

[ruedas]

Haha very funny, good to meet you!

[Jan van Leyden]

My nick is the name of a historical figure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Leiden). He and his cronies played an important role in my hometown's history. Fun thing that many people think JvL to be my real name.

[Fear Grounds]

My Username, is the name of the haunted house that I used to own and operate. It still fits, as I tend to focus more on horror/survival/mystery type games when running.

[Danalli]

In 1999 I started playing Everquest and took the name Mallo. As the years have gone on that name became impossible to take. So when I started playing SWTOR I took Danalli and have had no issues getting that. Not as interesting as some but there it is.

[SirMotte]

My name is the German word for moth.

My parents used to have a few of those huge oriental carpets. At some point one of it had been infested with moths at a very hard to reach place under a closet and my parents had to move it aside to clear out the infestation. While they were doing so, little me ran behind the closet, right into the "nest". There were around 13 or so that flew right into my face. This was a little bit traumatizing to me I think and when the time came for me to create my first nickname, for ICQ if I remember correctly, I used Motte (Moth) as a handle. At some point later I changed it to Sir Motte, just to annoy a buddy of mine when we played counterstrike. I stuck to it ever since.

[JFK]

Mine is simply my real life initials.
Although, I did marry Norma Jean B.

[blackclove]

Blackclove reflected my sad high-school/GenX obsession with clove cigarettes. I invented "Blackclove the Magician" when I needed a nickname to hide my real identity on CompuServe, which is a bulletin board system that predates the modern internet.

[MaloModo]

Latin. It means in an evil way.
Apparently in Spanish it means bad fashion, which is also accurate.

[Notsag]

Latin. It means in an evil way.
Apparently in Spanish it means bad fashion, which is also accurate.

Actually in Spanish it would be closer to bad mood, bad behavior, (mal modo) , bad fashion would be mala moda. (sorry, had to leave my 2 cents on that)

[Pepor]

Mine comes from a dog I had in the 90's. His real name was Snoopy, but he never listened to that name. One day, I shouted at him, I don't know why: Pepor, come here! and he came. Since then, that was his nickname and mine after he passed away.

[bmos]

lots of sites require usernames to be at least 4 characters, so I'm bmos.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GjzrQlbQN9Y/maxresdefault.jpg

[francisbaud]

The beginning is my first name so it wasn't hard to come up with it!

[jhilahd]

I was a young adult in the early 90's and a big Star Trek fan. I was also playing in my first D&D game in my new hometown of Dallas. Away from the small town and close knit group I grew up playing with. To sound cool I picked the Jalaad, from the episode Darmok, but I respelled it to sound "even cooler" (LOL). So it's jhilahd, and not jihad. :D

[OverCriticalHit]

Mine's your typical lame attempt at wordplay related to gaming lingo.

[Egheal]

Eghealbabock is the name of my Evil Gnome thief-illusionist, futur ruler of all the univers (since 1985).

[ruedas]

"Motte" Means something like "clod" in French

[ruedas]

post deleted

[ruedas]

When human younglings are very small, their guardians teach them what sounds farm animals make when they're not stressed or in pain. Then, in order for the younglings to associate the animal names with the noises, their guardians teach create little compound words of the two. I don't know if that story is true, but that's what I've heard anyway.

In the series Till Death us do Part Warren Mitchell played the sexist, racist, intolerant conservative voter "Alf Garnett" at first he called his long suffering wife played by the amazing Dandy Nicholls, a "silly old cow" but this received a lot of negative feedback for the BBC so he toned it down to "silly old moo". This was acceptable at the time!

[ruedas]

Its my real name, just backwards, i know, im a freaking genius!

Sagton?

[ruedas]

Deekin was a great NPC!!!!!

[RocksFall]

"Rocksfall.....everybody dies"

An angry triggered GM who hates the current campaign & players, TPK's them, and wants to go home.

[Dark Lord Galen]

Always one of my favorite NG episodes... I thought the play on words via a story was a great communication device. Thumbs Up to your version.

[dellanx]

My ranger's name on in Everquest on Ayone Ro server played from 1995 to 2008.

[Eltrym]

I had a cup from a trip to Myrtle Beach 30 years ago in my hand at the time. Myrtle backwards is Eltrym.

[similarly]

Years ago, I gave up an old username and wanted to create a new one. The old name was "Penny Dreadful", and I thought "I'd like a username that is similarly dreadful", and so that became my username. Most of the time, I shorten it now to simply "similarly" since almost no one uses adverbs in their usernames (though I think I was partly inspired to use an adverb because of a very silly 1980s gangster-movie parody called Johnny Dangerously).

[Malori Malheur]

I was so lucky. While surfing the Internet, something sparkled under a rickety bush on the edge of an imprint. I picked it up, removed the adhering dirt and polished it a little. Behold, my name came to light. :o