How did you choose your username?

[Diablo2000]

Diablo2000... I liked Diablo and was very unoriginal.

I tried to change it a couple times, but I grew very attached to Diablo2000 and other variants in case Diablo2000 is taken, like Diablo3000 or DiabloAwesome.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Well, I used to be called Wasder, but I decided I didn't like it and changed to this. Believe it or not, I actually thought it was terribly witty of me (bear in mind I was in my mid-teens and thought I was some kind of deep political commentator). I regret it- Wasder was goofy but TRTAB makes me sound like the kind of snarky leftwing shitgimp I was when I was 15. I'm probably more left wing than I used to be, it's just that now I don't see obvious puns as insightful political commentary.

It's a bugger to type too- I came up with Wasder simply because it's the absolute opposite. I couldn't think of a name and it came very naturally to someone that was then spending upwards of 8 hours a day playing Oblivion.

 

[And Man]

Back when I was 12 or so, I wanted a new username for StarCraft. My name is Andrew, and I thought And Man sounded cool and seemed like a name I wouldn't end up hating when I got older. I've been using And Man pretty much universally ever since.

 

[erbkaiser]

I needed to sign up for PSN and all three tags I used before were taken, so I just tried my current one (comes from my love for mediaeval European history).

I've been changing my accounts to it wherever I can since, because it was free everywhere except on Twitter.

 

[MiskWisk]

To tell the truth it isn't actually my username. My sister went and came up with it to use as a shared account on another website. Over time she stopped using it but I have continued to use it for myself. I have tried moving away from it, but I have had the darn thing so long that it feels weird using a different username.

 

[Evil Moo]

Decisions were made by 12 year old me. Lazy, uninventive decisions that lead to the name you see before you being used for pretty much any account I have online. My process involved picking an adjective that I liked the sound of and then adding something silly enough that it should be unlikely to be used by someone else. Evil Moo is the result.

In the event that I can't get this name I tend to go for the roughly equivalent Vile Bovine, which appeals both because of the continuity with the other name and the anagram translation from Evil to Vile. This being an even more absurd name, with the use of the lesser used word Bovine, it has yet to be taken by someone else as far as I recall.

 

[Alcom1]

I was six years old, trying to make a user ID for LEGO.com, and came up with 'Alcom'. A few years later, LEGO borked their login system, and I had to make a new user ID with a '1' at the end. I have no idea how I came up with 'Alcom' in the first place, though my strongest theory is that it's an odd truncated version of my actual full name.

 

[AT God]

When I first starting creating usernames, I used the name The Telemarketer, I think because I thought it was funny. (I was probably 8 or 9 years old) However, I soon realized that as more services required usernames, most places wouldn't except a 16 character username. At the time I was really fascinated by Counter Strike, I played it once (wasn't supposed to since it was an M rated game) and was immediately taken by the entire concept. I found a stick figure animation about Counter-strike online and one of the characters was called AT God, with the AT standing for the author's fictional company Anitude. So I boosted that name and have used it ever sense. The guy who made the animation later changed the company name to Flash-deck and went back and changed the animation to feature FD God so I feel significantly less cheap for continuing to use it all these years later. My steam account is still called the telemarketer though since Steam was kind enough to allow longer login names back in 2005.

 

[pokeplayer984]

My username is used wherever I go. If you see this name, it's most likely me.

It has quite a bit of history in it's creation. All you need to know is that my real name and other user names I tried have been made fun of from bullies. This is the first that has stopped that trend.

My name means as follows. I am someone who plays Pokemon Games. Hence, the "pokeplayer" part of the name. As for the number, add them up, and you get how old I was when I made it. It is now officially 10 years old.

What a decade it's been.

 

[RedDeadFred]

It rhymes. I like the name, Fred. It's related to video games.

Oddly enough, I haven't ever played any of the Red Dead games.

 

[Blow_Pop]

Well Blow Pop (or variations of depending on if it's already taken) is my nickname from working Halloween Haunt. I rarely ever hear my actual name anymore as a result of it. Hell a few of my friends parents call me that and one of my couple friends is teaching their daughter that that's my name (and yes all of those people know my actual name and know how much I DESPISE my name). So around the time I got it (near the end of 2011) I wound up changing my name everywhere (Damn you PSN let me change my name!) I could. And I'm happy with it.

Oh and I got the name because whenever anyone saw me when I WASN'T working (before work/after work/breaks) I always had a blow pop in my mouth. Because sugar = instant energy burst and Halloween Haunt requires a lot of energy.

Spoiler: and for those who don't know what a blow pop is

[a href=http://www.tootsie.com/candy/charms-blow-pops]basically a sucker on a stick with bubble gum inside[/a]

 

[Poetic Nova]

The outcome of mashing the fact that I like anime/manga and metal. Though people refer me as 'Otaku' or 'Ozzy', the latter being a nickname my friends gave me.

This is why my PSN and Steam account are diffirently named compared to my accounts on forums, etc.

 

[McElroy]

My first name is Elmo and Samuel L. Jackson can sport a nice kilt, even if nobody knew why.

 

[San Martin]

It rhymes. I like the name, Fred. It's related to video games.

Oddly enough, I haven't ever played any of the Red Dead games.

Oh yeah, sure...the guy in the $6000 tuxedo's gonna explain his username. Come on!

You have the best avatar on the Escapist.

OT: in 2013 I marched across the Andes with a rifle in order to liberate the Chilean people from their tyrannical government. I was swiftly arrested. Whilst in prison, I reflected on my adventures, and realising that I had been walking in the footsteps of José de San Martín, I rushed to the prison's computer, waited half an hour for Juan 'Knifey' Domínguez to finish reading Harry Potter fan-fiction, and created my account.

Real talk.

 

[Bizzaro Stormy]

I used to watch Sealab 2021. There should be more of a reason but there isn't.

 

[Solbasa]

Around the time when I had to make an Origin account, I really liked the word/name "Absalom", but the name was already taken. So, I rearranged the letters and replaced the m with another s, and somehow ended up with Solbasa. I liked it, so I started using it for everything where the name "Opez" was already taken, Opez being a name I came up with for a character I made when I was, like, 10. Eventually, I just gave up on Opez and started using Solbasa everywhere.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I think my friend found it on a random user name generator. We had a good laugh at how much we liked it, but it was left un-used. I decided to switch up from my previous username and use it instead. I still enjoy it~

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

Back in ye olden days of 2009, Avatar (the James Cameron one) was all the rage as the next big thing. I was a passionate viewer of said film, and at the time decided to have my username here reflect that.

The "Z" of my username stands for the first letter of my first name, Zach. I thought it rolled off the tongue quite nicely and have stuck with it ever since.

In accounts elsewhere, I am known as Dat Zach. That was just a funny persona I came up with then and there.

 

[happyninja42]

it was originally just a random set of words and a number when I was signing up for some other site. I can't recall the details, but after creating it, I got an inspiration from Dr. McNinja. There is the Inverse Ninja Rule, where if you have 1 ninja versus 100 ninjas, the 1 ninja is going to win. Because clearly he's a badass, and the others are mooks.

So, I decided that my guy was ninja number 42, in a group of ninjas, that were fighting some badass. He slaughtered them all until only ninja 42 was left, and he was thus no longer a Ninja Mook, but was upgraded to Solo Ninja Badass. He won the day, and then continued to carry his ninja number, to honor his fallen comrades.

So yeah, that's where I came up with happyninja42

 

[Rahkshi500]

I use to be into Bionicle a lot. Bought almost every toy there was of it the series up to the third movie. The rahkshi were my favorite enemies in the series, so I named my username after them.