The many usernames of SFF.SE

Question

What's the story behind your username?

If you are one of us folks whose username is not your actual name, what is the story behind it?

I'll go first.

Answer 1

I'm just bleh.

Complete bleh.

Answer 2

My display name on this SE community comes from a Character from George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Most of the people who are familiar with the work assume that it's after Aegon I 'The conquerer' Targaryen but in fact it is after Aegon V 'the fortunate' Targaryen. (Aegon I was a useless bloke who wasn't really a very good ruler).

I did toy with picking the name "Aegon the Answerer" (Because it kinda sounds like Aegon the Conqueror) but then I thought it is too weird. So Aegon it is, Seven bless our good king Aegon V.

Answer 3

From the English nursery rhyme.

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over
The candlestick.

I made the decision to abbreviate my middle name.

Answer 4

I wanted to promote an Area 51 initiative I created about wikis, first called "Wikis and Wikipedia" and then "Wikispeedia". We weren't getting enough people interested so I changed my user name to "Wikis at Area 51", an initiative which delivered zero impact.

When our Area 51 proposal died, I shortened it. I might change it again; searching for "Wikis" (eg in Mos Eisley or even here on meta) is pretty hopeless: most of the time people are talking about Wikipedia. :)

Answer 5

My user name, RedCaio, is inspired by my real name.

• "Red" is part of my last name.
• "Caio" is a Portuguese name that, when said aloud, sounds like "Kyle", which is my middle name. I speak Portuguese so I thought it was neat.

I've used CaioRed and RedCaio interchangeably on different sites. You'll notice my profile has links to my QueekyPaint and YouTube accounts, the usernames for those are CaioRed and RedCaio respectively.

Coincidentally, now that they've made a new Star Wars film, I noticed that CaioRed sounds a little bit like "Kylo Ren", hence my avatar/profile pic! O.O

Answer 6

I usually go with the name Spicy Wiener or swissdude323 (123 was taken). But after finding I really enjoyed Tolkien's world and becoming a regular on the Tolkien subs on reddit, I decided I needed a Sindarin name, so I chose Edlothiad.

edlothiad ger. of edlothia- blossoming, flowering <- edlothiand WR/293 Actually, edlothiand might be a misreading, according to David Salo who checked the original manuscript at Marquette and reported that his reading was unmistakably edlothiad.

I chose this name because my love for Tolkien had just begun to blossom and I wanted to nurture it. I also thought the name was very cool sounding, and the nickname Ed was very applicable.

Answer 7

My user name, TheLethalCarrot, is taken from my gaming name used on all new communities I join.

It used to be TheLethalCoder which was an extension from the above as I had originally joined Stack Exchange on Stack Overflow and so wanted to change it a bit to be more appropriate, it still is that on most sites.

However, recently @Edlothiad informed me that there was a charcter in A Song of Ice and Fire called Carrot and so I updated back to the original:

Carrot, you'll have charge of their chests and boxes.

Answer 8

When I was named, my parents searched for a name that wouldn't get abbreviated.

They failed.

Answer 9

Boring answer for you:

My user ID used to be my real name, but, as we got bigger, I decided to put at least a LITTLE bit of obfuscation between me and any random trolls / web-spiders, etc., and I switched to my initials. Years ago, I tried to buy the domain of my initials (khw.com), but there's someone with the same initials who had the same idea and has been sitting on it for 10 years or so. (No web page there, just 'under construction', but I can't really criticize, as I rarely have anything on my domain, either. Just temporary pages I put up for one thing or another.)

So, I bought the next best thing, to my way of thinking.. k-h-w.com.

Sigh -- do you KNOW how many sites don't think that's a POP3 compliant format? Bah.

Regardless, I've had the site for years, now, tho, so when I decided to remove my actual name k-h-w seemed the obvious choice.

Answer 10

I can't go through all of the answers yet because I've burned through my votes and I want to be able to do them justice as I read them. But it's a fascinating thread and when my votes kick back in, I'll be back to reading everyone's reasons.

That having been said, my story is simple, if a little mushy. rosesunhill is my newish user name on a lot of sites. My name is Michael Hillel Roseman, I have two sons, so rose-sun-hill, allowing for a little mutation in the middle part. It's easy for me to remember and I've yet to find it taken on a site. I dread that day.

Now I'm thinking of painting a thumbnail that represents the handle.

Answer 11

It's a bit of nonsense poetry from the album "Who Can I Turn To Stereo" by experimental music project Nurse With Wound. For a while it was the band's only album on Spotify, and when I first listened to it, it was just about the weirdest thing I'd ever heard. The dadaist lyrics and song titles really stuck in my mind. The first track, "Tune Time Machine", includes the wonderful wordage:

A great, armed mass of darkness fish was approaching. I had the girl, the records, and the jeweled knife, but he had the time machine.

Later on the album, there's an instrumental track titled "Approaching Darkness Fish", followed immediately by the brief "Darkness Fish", making this cthonic creature an icon of sorts for the album in my mind.

There's no intended connection to science fiction (I chose the name while I was still more active on StackOverflow), despite the lyrics' references to time machine. It's just a weird blurb of absurdist humor from an obscure musician I like.

Answer 12

It's my actual name. I never knew why Neo although I suspect that it's related to the Matrix which came out precisely one year before my birth. My mom always loved that movie.

Answer 13

I was playing a retro-futuristic/cyberpunk game. At some point, two Non-Player Characters (NPC) were interacting on a forum with a play of word. I liked the nickname so much that it stuck.

Answer 14

Back when I had to commute almost two hours to work it felt like I was riding with Zombies and I was becoming one. Thus the commuter became the Zommuter. Yeah, I'm sometimes zynical. Fortunately a friend drew me a more optimistic avatar, though these days I'm giving NFTs a shot.

Around minute 8:40 of Shaun of the Dead.
Fittingly enough, the music playing is Zombie Nation's Kernkraft 400.

Answer 15

My username is the child of pure creativity.
When I was in my early teenage years I liked to read Naruto mangas.
Naruto's father, was the 4th hokage of the leaf village. And he was super cool. So I started using the username Yondaime everywhere on the net, which translates to 4th in Japanese. Till one day, I had the dreaded message informing me that the username Yondaime is taken, and it suggested Yondaime008 instead.
And I was like, hey look, you'd look like the next spy to 007 with a licence to kill, which is nice but also I was born on the 8th.
This website -which i forgot- actually did the creative part for me. Sorry to dissapoint you all who are reading this.

Answer 16

I'm a maniacal supervillain who hates that hedgehog!

Answer 17

The entertainment/arts-related sites make using your favorite characters from the respective medium/genre an obvious choice, in contrast to some lame real-life name or a username used everywhere else on the internet anyway. But since I'm not much into written works I did not want to pick a character that I have to feel hypocritical for not knowing its base material inside out. Neither did I want to be the 5000th l0rd_vad3r or Gandalf87.

Being more into movies in general than science-fiction or fantasy per se, the obvious choice were original stand-alone science-fiction/fantasy movies that also work as mere cinematic experiences apart from the science-fiction/fantasy appeal alone. This is the reason why I first chose Sky Captain as an avatar, a great character from a very entertaining and unique retro sci-fi movie. I then later changed it to another great character from one of the best science-fiction movies of recent times and left it at that.

Answer 18

Long ago, I used to use Number 6 (or variations as it often wasn't available) as an alias on various places. Often, even after I gave that up, when the name I did choose for an e-mail address or whatever wasn't available, instead of tacking a 1 or a 01 on it, I'd throw 6 at the end.

A much more recent long-ago, I'd become a fan of Brian Stableford's "Star Pilot Grainger" series (also called the Hooded Swan series), and, even more than most books, I had trouble finding anyone who'd ever read it. So, aroundabout when Firefly came out, I started using StarPilotGrainger as an alias, specifically on a few Firefly sites and some more generic SF sites, in part with the hopes that somebody would recognize the series. It never happened.

Around the tail end of that I was seeking a new name for Xbox Live, and figured that Grainger was too obscure to want to bother explaining if anyone asked, but wanted to keep some of that vibe, I came up with the idea of putting together the two old names and just being StarPilotSix, like I'm some anonymous pilot that's backing up the main characters in any old space opera show or movie. And I stuck with that name through a few sci-fi related sites.

Answer 19

I came up with my Internet handle when I was 9. It's literally just "F1-crazy", as in, "crazy about Formula One", which I was (and thankfully, I still am). "F1Crazy" looked weird somehow, so I spelled it with a K instead. I quickly grew attached to the name and have been using it ever since. If you see an F1Krazy anywhere on the Internet, chances are that's me.

Answer 20

I don’t know. Everyone seems to hate whatever I write anyway.

<—- see?

Years ago I was posting on a political forum and for some reason people started writhing in pain whenever I told them what was wrong with them. So I did a genome test and found I was dropped off on a doorstep one day from a passing Vogon freighter (yeah, I was lucky I got my security clearance, because I was able to see some of the Area 51 files). Anyhow, I thought I’d carry on my family legacy. Vote if you care - or are still alive to.

Answer 21

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over
The candlestick

Too much Jack is a bad thing. That is why it is BEST to take JACK in MODERATION.

Answer 22

When I was a kid, I use to write video game guides, and I was pretty good. When I started playing World of Warcraft, I wanted a more universal name to use for everything, especially my contributions to Wowhead.

My main character was a Warlock, and I specialised in Gnome Engineering. My creative mind came up with GNome ENgineer warLOCK, but Gnemlock just sounded a lot better.

I pretty much use this name, everywhere, now.

Answer 23

My name is my initials (RDF) combined w/ my college nickname of "Fozz" (after Fozzie Bear, due to my combination of hirsute appearance and love of groan-inducing humor). If you see an RDFozz elsewhere - that's probably me - I've never failed to get the name on any site where I've asked for it, and it's always my first choice.

Answer 24

My real name, Stefano, has Greek origins and means "crown".
Sekhemty is the name of the ancient Egyptian double crown; I always had an interest in history, ancient and medieval in particular, and I chose an username that reflected these two things.

I used this nickname on the Internet since, well, always.

It is often misspelled as Sekhempty, a somewhat annoying accusation of being a hollow person.

Answer 25

DisturbedNeo

Disturbed - Nu-Metal band formed in Illinois in 1996. Theirs was the first metal I heard and they, alongside Linkin Park, played big roles in developing my music tastes throughout my teens. I would not enjoy the music I do without them, and so they will always hold a special place in my heart.

Neo - Main Antagonist of The Matrix series, with The Matrix being my favourite Sci-Fi, possibly even my favourite movie, of all time. It played a big role in the development of my taste in movies, and probably fashion, if my trench coat and assortment of black clothing is anything to go by, and so also holds a special place in my heart.

The name formed one fateful day during my youth. I was trying to think up a new name for an online game, and I wanted a unique name free of numbers and those godawful "Xx...xX" things you see all over online games. Whilst pondering, my mother noticed my plight and suggested "Why don't you take two things you like and put them together, like your favourite band and movie?" And thus DisturbedNeo was born. It has been my main online handle ever since. Thanks, mum.

Answer 26

I was trying to think of a random name for use on the SE network, and I decided to pick a fairly common name (on stackoverflow) - a type of variable that has only two values (a Boolean value.) Of course, when it comes to the sci-fi SE, I'm unique (as I'm the only one on this branch of SE!)

Answer 27

I am the one true king of the Seven Kingdoms.

Answer 28

I'm not using my usual username, because I need to protect my identity...

Well, really...

Answer 29

This is a username I've used for many years, most actively on here and on Twitter, where I spout all kinds of inane drivel :-) The origin of my name is simply my surname and the squad number of my then-favourite player which I once got on the back of a football (soccer) shirt :-)

Answer 30

I've used Marakai for... it must be decades now. Heard it yoiks ago, when a tour guide gave it as the name of a huuuuuge saltwater croc up on the Catherine River in the Northern Territory. You can see why I thought it'd be a cool name. :D It's apparently a Melanesian/Micronesian word - not Aboriginal or of the people of Arnhem Land. Sounds good, though.

No, my profile age isn't real either. As Aragorn said "I'm older than I look."