What's in a name?

August 26, 2008 8:38 PM

No, really. What is the deal with your nickname?

Just so I don't have to spend time checking each profile individually to amuse myself on slow Metafilter days, I want to know the story behind your username. Spill it.

posted by iamkimiam to MetaFilter-related at 8:38 PM (384 comments total)

Mine's pretty self-explanatory. Very useful for introductions at meetups I've found.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:39 PM on August 26, 2008

Dad wanted Richard Jr.

Mom won. Let's not talk 'bout my sister, ok?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:40 PM on August 26, 2008

Mine is a reference to a certain Douglas Coupland novel.

Once, on some other comment board (I think it was the Onion AV club) someone responded "Just because you've read Microserfs dosen't mean you're cool"
posted by hellojed at 8:41 PM on August 26, 2008

I don't talk much.
posted by Quietgal at 8:43 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

mine's obvious.
posted by quonsar at 8:44 PM on August 26, 2008

It was funny, iamkimiam, when you first added me as a contact, my first response was, 'no, I AM Kim I am!"

My name is actually Kim.

Anyways. Word geek; found flibbertigibbet (silly flighty person, usually female) on M-W's word of the day list; found it again in Lear; found an essay about the origins of flibbertigibbet as a demon's name; fell in love with the word.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 8:45 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

The real deal with my nickname.
posted by timeistight at 8:47 PM on August 26, 2008

An oflinkey is a widget. At least that is what a high school friend used in place of 'widget' during a lunchroom conversation.
posted by oflinkey at 8:47 PM on August 26, 2008

Rather boringly, mine is a common nickname for my name.

This year I found out that it also means 'foolish' or 'simple-minded' even if I never before have heard (and I still haven't) someone using it in that sense.
posted by Memo at 8:48 PM on August 26, 2008

Anagram of real name.
posted by LionIndex at 8:50 PM on August 26, 2008

"Your ears would be the pride of my. . .ear bucket."
posted by EarBucket at 8:53 PM on August 26, 2008 [8 favorites]

Mine is a random collection of syllables that a friend garbled out while high on sugar when we were 11. Coincidentally, I signed up for my first hotmail account soon afterwards, and that string of nonsense was the first thing that came into my head.
posted by jacalata at 8:55 PM on August 26, 2008

Dude, Sabbath.
posted by The Straightener at 8:56 PM on August 26, 2008

My husband always called me "pearl" because I am "round and white and shiny", like a pearl. That kind of turned into pearlybob and that stuck. I AM round and white and shiny so it fits.
posted by pearlybob at 8:56 PM on August 26, 2008

It's from a comp.lang.c++ post decrying "the cult of orthogonality". I always wanted a cult.
posted by orthogonality at 8:59 PM on August 26, 2008

I was a sportswriter back in the day. And back in his day, Cool Papa Bell was the fastest man alive.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:59 PM on August 26, 2008

I wish I were a female cow.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:00 PM on August 26, 2008

I'm named after the ancient greek philospher that fought vampires on Mars.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:02 PM on August 26, 2008 [4 favorites]

I got hit on too often on the early ddials if I used my real name (Amanda), so I went by "Guck" or "Gucky" depending on how lazy I was when I /h'ed that day. I've been using it since 89 or 90 on bbses and ddials.

(Gucky was a childhood nickname because my two-year-old cousin couldn't say duck, and thought I was one because I was hanging out on a pier feeding them. My aunts and uncles thought it was funny and used it from then on out.)

It has nothing to with the German space beaver cartoon character, the Guck boat company or the fact that the word "Guck" means idle or meaningless talk in the OED.
posted by Gucky at 9:05 PM on August 26, 2008

I wanted a name I could use in blues-ey message boards but I couldn't get any of my first picks, so I just started stringing blues-ey words together tacked on to "madam" until I found a combo that took. Kinda silly. But I like the "juju" part because it's an awesome word and my given name is Julie so it works. A persnickety cavil I will air here for the first time: there is no "e" on the end of madam. I am not a madame, simply a madam.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:06 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I picked mine because I'm an idealistic young hippie.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:09 PM on August 26, 2008 [4 favorites]

pearlybob, gucky - I am annoyed at myself that with so many names here, I default to assuming people are males. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson from thomas j wise, but no-o-o-o.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:10 PM on August 26, 2008

I'm uncreative.
posted by steveminutillo at 9:13 PM on August 26, 2008

It's kind of a convoluted story. I was a dedicated lurker back in the days before $5 sign-up. This post about the Game introduced me to Shinteki, and eventually lead to playing in full Games; starting a team with my brother, his girlfriend, and a guy we've both known since grade school. My brother and I used to have a band called lowkey (a prankster/music/attitude pun), so when we signed up for the Game, we called our team "lowkey".

One day I noticed sign-ups were open, and I had to come up with a username. Lowkey was taken, so I went with "team lowkey", based on our Game team name, since it was MetaFilter that got us started. Turned out it was a good way to go, since aubilenon recognized my team name and now his team and my team are collaborating on running a Game of our own. Yay, MetaFilter!
posted by team lowkey at 9:14 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

My name was given to me by a writer-fellow I once knew from a coffee shop I used to hang out at too much. They were making up offensive nicknames for each other, going around the table with offensive nicknames that would be far too complicated to explain - and worse - until it came to be my turn.

"You? I don't know. You're just fucking loquacious."

At the time I was looking for a new pseudonym as the current one I was using* was dated and simplistic and nondescriptive, and it stuck. It was apt. I was far from offended. I am indeed talktative, argumentative and even frequently wrong. I've earned it.

(*It used to be "slide". I slid, once, across a lot of concrete.. Long story.)
posted by loquacious at 9:15 PM on August 26, 2008

Longer explanation later.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:17 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was seriously considered going with the name "SuperTigerJetPack to the MAXX!!!" but then I decided that would probably send the wrong message. So I went with something boring, instead.
posted by Ms. Saint at 9:19 PM on August 26, 2008

Dude, Sabbath.

Dude, I thought you were like The Cleaner, or The Closer.

My name is one of my dog's names. I named him because he gave me peace from a very difficult situation I was in right before I got him (and his sister, Sam).
posted by Pax at 9:21 PM on August 26, 2008

Dogs' names?
posted by Pax at 9:22 PM on August 26, 2008

when's fishfucker gonna get here?
posted by docpops at 9:23 PM on August 26, 2008 [7 favorites]

1. Red
2. Orange
3. Yellow
4. Green
5. Blue
6. Purple

Colors of the rainbow!
posted by sixcolors at 9:24 PM on August 26, 2008

Our cat's name is Lucy, but we call her Lucinda when we're feeling goofy.

I started using it on parenting websites when my usual user name (Medea) didn't seem quite appropriate. So although this is not a parenting website (THANK GOD), I chose to use it here too.
posted by Lucinda at 9:24 PM on August 26, 2008

Mine is my name.
posted by Nattie at 9:24 PM on August 26, 2008

When I came to America, I met some people and one of them said I was extroverted. Everyone agreed and I pretended like I knew what it meant to be "extra verted." Was it a good thing or a bad thing? I was a little insecure, because I'd heard that Americans could be very direct and they might tell you something negative, whereas most Europeans would be very polite and not mention someone else's deficient qualities.

When I could get to my dictionary, I found that "verted" wasn't there. I asked some people if they knew what "verted" meant and they looked at me funny and said they didn't. I thought it must be bad, since no one would tell me (and clearly they wouldn't tell me, because I was obviously verted myself, in fact EXTRA verted.) So then I was really insecure about it.

It wasn't until months later when I heard the word "introverted" that a little spark flashed in my head and I figured it all out.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:26 PM on August 26, 2008 [24 favorites]

My S.O. and I were brainstorming titles for the children's books that we will write someday. One was "The Littlest Brussels Sprout." The main character will have a heart of gold and a sunny disposition, and will manage to overcome adversity despite being one of the world's most hated vegetables. The End.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout at 9:28 PM on August 26, 2008 [8 favorites]

When I signed up for a MeFi account, all the names I wanted were already taken. Finally I buttonmashed a random set of keys, because I was only signing up to post a comment or two and wasn't really planning to stay around long.

This was in 2001.
posted by ook at 9:30 PM on August 26, 2008

Seemed better than Num Lock.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:31 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

HAY YOU GUISE I GOT A SHOUTOUT ON THE NEW HOLD STEADY!!!!!1!!!ONE!

Seriously though, it would be worth the winters just to see Dillinger Four occasionally.
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 9:35 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

mine is my name
posted by muckster at 9:36 PM on August 26, 2008

It's an old family name.
posted by HITLERTRON 5000 at 9:36 PM on August 26, 2008 [41 favorites]

I loved my TRS-80, what can I say.
posted by cashman at 9:38 PM on August 26, 2008

Mine is my first name (Amy) and two initials. Not too exciting. A couple of my friends who read it as "Amy Ms." think it looks like a porn name, but I don't see it.
posted by amyms at 9:39 PM on August 26, 2008

Vrakatar is my demonic name.
posted by vrakatar at 9:41 PM on August 26, 2008

I fell tiny and insignificant also 07, thats right one zero better then Bond.

Now that I've "grown up" I hate it but I'm stuck with it and to lazy to change everything.
posted by lilkeith07 at 9:43 PM on August 26, 2008

stavros is a Greek name, and a reference to the Crucifixion. Put it together with 'thewonderchicken' and you get an oblique suggestion that ol' Jesus took the easy way out by letting himself getting nailed up, and an invitation to consider the theological ramifications to such a heretical thought.

No, it was just a pub-crawl brainfart, like I say on my profile. (Except that I suspect the 'stavros' part bubbled up because of my friend Stavros Akritides, who ran the Irish bars on three of the Cyclades islands, where I spent entirely too much time and money back in paleolithic era.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:43 PM on August 26, 2008

So there I was, rounding the Cape in sight of the African coast, the wind port astern, blowing a nasty seven knots onto the rocky shore. My crew, the mutinous dogs, had me locked in the great cabin, the light wood splintering under the force of cutlass strokes.
I remembered then the brace of charged pistols I kept dry in a tarpaulin sack under the chart box. Capricious fate! I might not live to see the Azores, but surely I'd face my death a commander, even if a gloriously failed one.
With a mighty kick I flung open the door, and faced the rebel, the hound, the right hand I should have had cut from me in Calcutta.

I'll see you in Hell, and we'll sail with the Devil, Juan Shenanigan Elcano!

posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:49 PM on August 26, 2008 [7 favorites]

It's my real name.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 9:50 PM on August 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

After lurking for a year, it somehow seemed to me that the title of a particular Blues Brothers song seemed to have certain indefinable MetaFilterness to it. That is all.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:50 PM on August 26, 2008

I'm named after this song. Metafilter is the only site where I don't use my real name. At the time when I registered, it seemed like real names were passe, but that seems to have changed.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:52 PM on August 26, 2008

I had just reread Hitchhiker's Guide and the name literally made me laugh out loud.

If I had known how big a part of my life MeFi would become I never would have settled on such a random geeked out moniker.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:52 PM on August 26, 2008

Back in the hoary early 90's, I was looking for an AOL screen name, my eyes fell upon a volume of Poe I had sitting on a nearby shelf, and I came up with some pun on The Pit & The Pendulum that I can't remember. At some point later on I lost that account because I was falsely accused of entering a German-language chatroom and cursing at people. I don't speak German. I figured someone had cracked my password and closed it. I came up with a bunch of alternative AOL names, but for some reason Penduluum stuck. I've used it in a variety of internet contexts ever since. It was the first thing I thought of when signing up. Actually I had a penduluum account back in the MeFi early-early days which I forgot the password to and which was closed due to inactivity without my ever having used it to leave a single comment.

God in Heaven that was a boring story. Good thing I didn't put it on my profile page.
posted by penduluum at 9:53 PM on August 26, 2008

Elroy book, or Ant-Man villain? YOU BE THE JUDGE!
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:58 PM on August 26, 2008

HAY YOU GUISE I GOT A SHOUTOUT ON THE NEW HOLD STEADY!!!!!1!!!ONE!

posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice

i totally thought of your username when i first heard that.
posted by Hat Maui at 9:58 PM on August 26, 2008

Mine is a long story and a sad story, and I don't like talking about it much, but I guess now is finally the time to come clean.

The name 'Effigy2000' is an old name. So old, in fact, that they say that it predates time itself. In my own research into the subject, I have found evidence to suggest that it was used in as old a civilization as the Sumerians, but not much credible evidence that dates it back much further than that. Sufficed to say, it is an old nickname, but worse; it carries with it a terrible, dark secret.

It is said that the name was first given to a servant girl in Sumer around 5300BC, who was then summarily executed as a sacrifice to their Gods. The custom was odd, in that the girls would actually be dressed in effigy of the Gods themselves, which I believe was meant to signify an acknowledgment of the Gods from the people of Sumer. From what I can make out, this practice continued once every year, and it was always a girl. The plan, as I understand it, was that only when 2000 girls had been sacrificed would the Gods be happy and grant everlasting prosperity upon the Sumerian people.

As legend has it, on the day that the 2000th effigy was to be sacrificed, a great storm began to brew above the Sumerian city. As the girl was lifted upon the sacrificial table, a bolt of lightning came down from the heavens and struck her. The priests who had tried to murder her were dead, all charred to a cinder, but the girl was alive. The records I have studied seem to suggest that the girl stood up and then floated in mid-air, her eyes glowing bright blue and her hair flying about wildly in the wind. She then killed 2000 Sumerian men within the space of only an hour, and despite the guards best efforts, no one was able to stop her. The girl then left the city, but not before telling the people of Sumer that she would return once every year to kill those she deemed to be unworthy.

Of course the priests believed it to be a sign that they had angered the Gods and the practice of slaying a girl in effigy, a tradition that had existed for almost 2000 years, was stopped in the hope that the girl's warning would not come true. But a year to the day later, she returned, killing over 400 Sumerians, both men and women this time. After the carnage was over, the people held week-long prayer ceremonies and sacrificed legions of animals in an attempt to appease the gods but their efforts were in vain for once again, a year later, she returned and murdered over 850 people.

As she left the city, a lone warrior followed her in stealth. He followed this woman back to a cave she was inhabiting deep within the mountains. It is said that he waited until night fell and once it did, he snuck into her cave with his spear in an attempt to end her life. Just as he was about to strike the sleeping woman, she awoke. They fought for hours but despite their best efforts, neither could kill one another. But the battle sparked in them an intense feeling of animal lust, and before either knew it, they were in one another’s arms. It is said that that night they conceived the strongest human being ever to walk the earth. They lived together at the cave and nine months later the woman gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Dumuzid. After two more months, they began to discuss returning to the city. The woman was scared, for her crimes were great, but her lover convinced her that she would be accepted back if he explained the situation to the high priest. And so, on the day that would have marked her third appearance in the city, they returned to try and return to society.

But their return was not the happy affair they had hoped. They people of the city thought the woman had returned to kill more of them, and the warrior, long believed to have been killed following his perilous trek to kill the woman, was thought to be undead, and in service to what the people were now calling the 'Demon Woman.' They were quickly overwhelmed by an angry mob and although the woman could easily have protected both her lover and herself, she did not fight back. Both she and her lover were killed that day.

Her son, Dumuzid, was left alone in the woods and was raised by a pack of wolves. When he was about 18, legend has it that he took on the name of his mother, 'Effigy2000', and left the pack. He travelled the world, honing his fighting skills and learning how to fish. One day he realised he shared the same powers his mother had come across when being struck by the bolt of lightning 21 years ago. Apparently they had been dormant all this time. Effigy2000, once a proud warrior of truth and justice, somehow became corrupted by this newfound power. And he used this power to elevate himself and acquire riches and followers. Although the legends call this new king of Sumer Drumzid the Fisherman, in truth he was one of the earliest Effigy2000s ever to have walked the arth.

After he died (he was after all, only mortal), it is somewhat unclear how the name progressed from individual to individual. It is said that Ceaser was in fact an Effigy2000, as was Sui Wen Ti and Umar ibn al-Khattab, apparently. More recently it is believed that title belonged to Dmitry Donskoy and even Bismark. But then somewhere in the mid 1900s, the line faltered and for a few decades it lay completely dormant.

And then it came to me. Yes, me. I never expected it nor wanted it but damn it, it was my birthright. I was sitting at home watching TV one day when I got this knock at the door. I opened it and it's this crazy old guy in a robe and a long flowy beard and he's telling me I'm like his God or something. He says I'm an Effigy! Of course at first I don't believe him and tell him he's crazy and needs to go away but then he asked me if I had ever channelled lightning and I remembered that once, at the age of eight, I had momentarily channelled lightning through my fingertips. I invited him in and he told me most of what I had told you. I was enthralled to say the least.

But then this guy tells me that if I want to become Effigy2000, I have to go claim my birthright. "How do I do that?" I ask, and he tells me that it won't be easy. That it was a perilous and dangerous task that would chill me to the bone. That it could even, quite possibly, kill me. But much like Dumzid all those years ago, the power and prestige that being an Effigy2000 offered me was calling me like some siren song. I told him I would do anything... anything to become the latest Effigy2000. He asked me if I was serious. He told me that I might have to kill people. That I might have to lose my soul to obtain such a prize. I repeated I would do whatever it took. And that was all he needed to be convinced of my sincerity.

He told me to become the latest Effigy2000 I would have to take out my credit card, sign up for a Paypal account and then use that account to pay a once off $5 membership fee to Metafilter. He said then that all I would have to do then is enter the name 'Effigy2000' as my username and then my long and perilous task would be complete. So I did all of that without a moments notice.

And here I am. The latest Effigy2000 in a long line of Effigy2000s. I can't channel electricity or anything like that and I haven't killed anyone... yet. But that crazy old dude who showed up at my door tells me that I have to give these things time. I'll wait, but dammit, I'm 30! Becoming a God better not take forever, because I have things to do, enemies to punish and places to rule!

What's taking so long? God dammit.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:58 PM on August 26, 2008 [6 favorites]

You can find an incredibly long-winded explanation of my username, the reason I chose it, and its several meanings here.
posted by Caduceus at 9:59 PM on August 26, 2008

After lurking for a year, it somehow seemed to me that the title of a particular Blues Brothers song seemed to have certain indefinable MetaFilterness to it.

I think that was rubber biscuit, ricochet.
posted by vrakatar at 10:02 PM on August 26, 2008

flibbertigibbet: "It was funny, iamkimiam, when you first added me as a contact, my first response was, 'no, I AM Kim I am!"

My name is actually Kim.

Anyways. Word geek; found flibbertigibbet (silly flighty person, usually female) on M-W's word of the day list; found it again in Lear; found an essay about the origins of flibbertigibbet as a demon's name; fell in love with the word."

Haha, that's great! And I learned a new multi-morphemic word today!

It's really funny* the associations one makes based on user names. I vaguely recall that I added you as a contact a while back because of some linguistic thing (maybe you answered a language askme or something), but since then I'd always assumed you were male. I guess I probably did that because I also assumed your username was your full real name. Not consciously I suppose, because now the more that I think about it, that would be a very strange name indeed. Then again, I do remember wondering at some point if people called you Flib for short.

*And by 'funny', sometimes I mean 'funny and scary'.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:07 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I thought I was being really, really clever.



Sigh.
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:07 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not at long-winded as Effigy2000's reason, but also not nearly as entertaining.
posted by Caduceus at 10:09 PM on August 26, 2008

felix is latin for "lucky"
be-tachat is hebrew for "in the ass"

I'd always thought about writing a satirical novel with that as a pseudonym, but when signups reopened, it seemed a good name for an alternate identity.

i'm sort of back-and-forth on it now.
posted by felix betachat at 10:09 PM on August 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

It makes me feel Parisian.
posted by desjardins at 10:12 PM on August 26, 2008

Being a scaredy cat, someone said, oh, sometime in the 90s, something like "Fear is a beacon to the truth", which I thought was profound (hey, i was younger, then), and so my online name was Beacon to the truth, which was meant to indicate that I was afeared, but apparently seemed to mean I was pompous (which wasn't the look I was going for) so I changed it to Beacon but people called me bacon, and I wanted to incorporate my 3D name, so I changed it to BeeJoy, and people who were nice to me called me Beej (at least, I thought they liked me, until I found out that was a euphemism for blowjob - still, given how highly people rank Bj's, perhaps it was a compliment afterall) and then when I signed up here, cos my husband has the paypal account details (and that's a long story that won't fit in a bracket), I started it, mucked it up, and he needed to use a new name for me so I said b33j, so I'm an elite pompous blowjob with aspirations to fear and the truth.

Yes, much less interesting than the time it took to tell you.
posted by b33j at 10:14 PM on August 26, 2008

It's my surname, as if I was a roman emperor.

Man, I wish I was a roman emperor.
posted by spaltavian at 10:17 PM on August 26, 2008

I like to imagine a snooty maitre'd saying my username (ie. or-range palm-ple-moose). It makes me laugh.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 10:18 PM on August 26, 2008

When I signed up for a MeFi account, all the names I wanted were already taken. Finally I buttonmashed a random set of keys, because I was only signing up to post a comment or two and wasn't really planning to stay around long.

This was in 2001.
posted by ook at 9:30 PM on August 26 [+] [!]

Dude, i totally thought it was a reference to Pratchett's librarian. I'm ultra-disappointed.
posted by b33j at 10:19 PM on August 26, 2008 [4 favorites]

vrakatar: I think that was rubber biscuit, ricochet.

Dammit.

Okay then, a reference from a Blues Brothers song was the inspiration.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:20 PM on August 26, 2008

mine's obvious.
posted by quonsar at 8:44 PM on August 26 [+] [!]


Yeah, felt I might be lacking in some understanding so I thought I'd google quonsar (it's probably some astronomical term, right? amirite?) and this is all I came up with for a definition.
posted by b33j at 10:21 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Girlnextdoor with no vowels...
posted by Grlnxtdr at 10:23 PM on August 26, 2008

The only time I played a cleric in D&D the character's name was Caine.

When signing onto online games I usually use brocaine, and it was just the first thing I thought of when coming up with an alias. I didn't use my real name because at the time I signed up I was an even worse writer than I am now, and I feared accidentally offending someone who would become my nemesis.

I felt tiny and insignificant also 07, thats right one zero better then Bond

Well actually the double zero means license to kill, Bond is promoted to triple zero for one of the books, which IIRC is a license to acts that might embroil the UK in war.
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:24 PM on August 26, 2008

In high school, a friend of mine began using the word "chud" where others might use "crud" or "junk". He was not, at the time, aware of any other usages of this word and neither was I. "Monkey" has always been a go-to word for me; I often use it as an exclamation.

One day my friend and I, along with a few others, were playing the card game 'asshole' in my mother's kitchen when she walked in and asked what we were playing. Everyone at the table paused and adopted the same hesitant expression - no one wanted to say "asshole" in front of my mom. So I said "chudmonkey", for reasons I don't fully understand.

I was already an internet nerd at that point, but I didn't have a hotmail account since I was a POP3 snob. It was shortly after the cards incident that I decided to grab an account, but every variation of my real name was taken, so I decided on chudmonkey and have used it ever since, in any situation where my real name isn't available or appropriate.

I chose to use it for MeFi because it seemed like the majority of people went by nicknames, and I desperately wanted to fit in.
posted by chudmonkey at 10:25 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's the best episode of the best series that Nickelodeon ever broadcast.
posted by Rangeboy at 10:27 PM on August 26, 2008 [3 favorites]

I love weird names, long weird names and books by Daniel Pinkwater.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 10:27 PM on August 26, 2008

Hey, is this the place to ask if anyone else, at any point, interpreted mathowie as "mathow ie"? Because that's how I read it for the longest time, until someone linked to the mathowie's community blog song. My brain kept trying to interpret "mathow" as a corruption of "Matthew" and I spent the longest time wondering what the hell the "ie" stood for.

I'm astonished I didn't interpret it as "math owie," but that's neither here nor there.
posted by Caduceus at 10:32 PM on August 26, 2008

My husband and I used to go to a movie theater in backwoods Arkansas that only had a few of those pre-movie slides that played every time. One of them was a rebus (recreation), where the answer was supposed to be the name of a famous actor (guess which one?). They showed it over and over and over ad nauseum, and we used to joke around with some alternate answers - including Ducky Gemstone - and it became a standing joke.

He used to to play games online using the name. Since we shared accounts I would generally play as "Mrs. Gemstone", and I used that for a few years. But my friends all shortened it to Gemmy, and that's stuck since I started using it around 2003/2004.
posted by gemmy at 10:32 PM on August 26, 2008

My girlfriend gave it to me. She is long gone. The name stuck.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:35 PM on August 26, 2008

I initially tried to buy geekguy.com back in ~1996 but, oddly, it was registered to someone who lived on the same street as me. It was then turned into a porn site. Weird, right? So I decided to go with geekyguy. I am glad I went with the extra y.
When Metafilter sign-ups opened to welcome me and my 14k brethren I didn't really need to think about choosing a user name. are we still using user?
posted by geekyguy at 10:35 PM on August 26, 2008

A co-worker often called me 'Alvy' and I thought it was an Annie Hall reference, as more than one person has remarked on the similarities between Woody Allen's character and myself ("Just you're not as funny"). It turned out she was actually saying LV, my initials.

Ampersand is, as it says in the profile, just fun to say.
Any resemblance between the character and my body type is purely coincidental.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:38 PM on August 26, 2008

On the way out of college, my circle of friends decided we ought to set up a collective server to make it easier to keep in touch and collaborate on things programmatical. We ended up going with a neural theme, and that lead to a landrush for thematic usernames. I threw out cortex before anyone else could, on the grounds that it's a pretty good one, and that stuck.

This all went down not too long before I joined in April 2001.
posted by cortex at 10:42 PM on August 26, 2008

It just came into my head in a burst of sudden magic and henceforth I was known as 'liquorice'. No, seriously that's what happened. I don't even use this nickname anywhere else. I'm neither black nor stretchy and I don't even like the TASTE of liquorice. Hmm, maybe this ties into the whole self-loathing angle I've got going for me.
posted by liquorice at 10:42 PM on August 26, 2008

The morally ambiguous, lethal, bitter changeling of Iain M. Banks' first Culture novel.

I've also used Demosthenes from early BBS days, partly in homage to the online identity in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and partly out of respect for the original Greek orator, but to use it here seemed somewhat presumptuous... also, my respect for Orson Scott Card has diminished as I have learnt more about him, causing the association to lose a portion of its pleasure.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:43 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Hodja Nasreddin
posted by nasreddin at 10:49 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I used to use a made-up nickname (that was misspelled, to boot!), but decided it was stupid and inane for some reason after my heart attack. So I use an easy analog of my real name. After I die, I want my grandchildren to be able to find me on the GooG collective hyperlight storage servers.
posted by pjern at 10:49 PM on August 26, 2008

live cat + dead dog. I really miss that dog.
posted by Miastar at 10:51 PM on August 26, 2008

'Cause it's tacocohc backwards.
posted by chococat at 10:53 PM on August 26, 2008

As my profile used to say: Campbell, not Waits.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:54 PM on August 26, 2008

I got hit on too often on the early ddials if I used my real name (Amanda)

Heh... I bet I hit on you back then. Evanston, right?
posted by pjern at 10:58 PM on August 26, 2008

KokuRyu is the name of a particularly delicious sake brewed in Fukui, where I used to live (and used to drink a looooooooooooooot of local, micro-brewed sake). Man, I love sake, and I love Fukui.

KokuRyu also means "black dragon" (traditionally, there is no such thing as a black dragon, and dragons only come in the colours green, red, blue and white).
posted by KokuRyu at 11:00 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Combination of two fictional characters: Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi & Kenneth Patchen's Godot-like H Roivas, from the dark surrealist novel, The Journal of Albion Moonlight.

No particular thought or meaning behind it, other than a general liking of absurdism & the fact that I didn't want a name that had any particular prima facie meaning.
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:01 PM on August 26, 2008

They sometimes call me "The Rooster".
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:02 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I hate cats.
posted by theantikitty at 11:03 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I wanted to get some use out of the one and only time I came up with the perfect title for an essay (about an internet flirtation that had fizzled). The venerable, family-standards newspaper that published the piece gave it a title that 1. was instantly forgettable, and 2. didn't have the word "coitus" in it.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 11:05 PM on August 26, 2008

...
posted by not_on_display at 11:15 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

amyms writes "A couple of my friends who read it as 'Amy Ms.' think it looks like a porn name, but I don't see it."

I read it as a-mims for a long time, until I suddenly read it as "amy manuscript".
posted by orthogonality at 11:16 PM on August 26, 2008

It describes my box of unpublished and possibly unpublishable work.
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 11:22 PM on August 26, 2008

My web site is Internet Brothers.
posted by netbros at 11:29 PM on August 26, 2008

Iamkimiam: Heh!

oh yes, it's a very long and awkward name. I recently joined the metafilter Team Fortress 2 group, and kept flibbertigibbet as my name there, originally, as that's my only online nickname.

I quickly figured out that trying to say 'flibbertigibbet' when you're seeing it for once of the first times, and you're trying to shoot someone else, does not work. It comes out like you're eating mashed potatoes while trying to read Ulysses aloud. "If only we could pronounce her name, she might have survived!"

I went through a lot of really pretentious and tough to pronounce names, until I settled on something foolproof: Spank Truck!. (I think the relevant bit is about 20, 25 minutes in; thanks to CitrusFreak12 for pointing me to it). Easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and I'd respond to it.

Soon after changing to Spank Truck! (exclamation point to make it sound like a command, like GOSHDARNIT SPANK THAT TRUCK MISTER OR SO HELP ME), I got a microphone and started talking in-game.

Somebody heard my voice and went, "Wait, Spank Truck is a girl?"

I seem to give off a masculine vibe, I guess.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:30 PM on August 26, 2008

Hitlertron 5000 was taken.
posted by klangklangston at 11:32 PM on August 26, 2008

I lurked for a while, and was particularly fond of the Kwantsar/quonsar trope. I knew that I wanted to Kwantsartify someone as a homage with my username; the name of the American philosopher W.V.O. Quine was natural given my interests at the time.
posted by Kwine at 11:34 PM on August 26, 2008

I'm waiting for damn dirty ape to come clean.
posted by netbros at 11:35 PM on August 26, 2008

Anglophile Québecoise and badly lapsed Catholic, yet a rather cheerful and garrulous drinker, actually. But I'm still open to alternative explanations.
posted by maudlin at 11:41 PM on August 26, 2008

I had always assumed flibbertigibbet was simply a wayward nun who'd fallen in love with an Austrian Naval captain and, with him and his seven mischievous children, fled the Nazis whilst singing songs about singing songs.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:42 PM on August 26, 2008 [3 favorites]

I love you, Sys Rq, and your twin brother Print Screen.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:50 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Heinrich Köselitz, Nietzsche's editor and friend, and a fine writer and musician in his own right.
posted by koeselitz at 11:57 PM on August 26, 2008

Because of my job, I had to learn a bit about Ottawa history. I first thought of using a ldspkr for a name, but for whatever reason the song came into my head, with alternate lyrics. So I go by the name what I consider one of the most representative days in Canadian history: September 17, 1849. To me, my country is a long, drawn-out, sometimes tragic conflict, but with relatively few victims. (But our gov't acted in a shitty way towards a number of groups, including, but not limited to, Jewish people, Cree people, Inuit people, Irish people, &c. &c.)
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 11:58 PM on August 26, 2008

felix betachat: felix is latin for "lucky" ... be-tachat is hebrew for "in the ass"

See, and here all this time I've been looking at your username and thinking, "felix, the secondary French cat."
posted by koeselitz at 12:01 AM on August 27, 2008 [6 favorites]

I'm dancing!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 12:02 AM on August 27, 2008

UbuRoivas: Combination of two fictional characters: Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi & Kenneth Patchen's Godot-like H Roivas, from the dark surrealist novel, The Journal of Albion Moonlight.

Ah! So it is like the band!
posted by koeselitz at 12:03 AM on August 27, 2008

         Carson laughed. 'It cannot be doubted that we witness the meeting of dear friends,' said Carson. 'So these are the lost ones of your company, Carson? The days are fated to be filled with marvels. Already I have seen many since I left my house; and now here before my eyes stand yet another of the folk of legend. Are these not Carson, that some among us call Carson?'
         'Carson, if you please, lord,' said Carson.
         'Carson?' said Carson. 'Your tongue is strangely changed; but the name sounds not unfitting so. Carson! No report that I have heard does justice to the truth.'

also

"I think I can work it in."
         "Next time, push her off," Carson said.
         "Push who off?"
         "Carson B"
         "Ah, Carson B," said Carson. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. "Carson," he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll see if we can catch a carson-fish."
         "A what?"
posted by carsonb at 12:05 AM on August 27, 2008

When I was younger, one of my favorite computer time-sinks was Civilization II. I wasn't much into the combat aspect, but more the challenge of developing an efficient and aesthetically-pleasing civilization. It was pleasing to drop down new cities and carve spindly roads through the hills and forests, laying down irrigation and farming like abstract art. Then later ramrodding railroads like I-bars through the webwork, hooking up my vast expanse of cities in a united, prosperous whole.

Since I placed so much emphasis on making my civ unique and well-designed, I always disliked using the standard city names. It felt weird colonizing some new continent with cities like San Francisco and New Delhi. So I tended to make up names for new settlements, throwing together sounds and letters to make some exotic new placename.

After all this time I only remember a few of those names -- Riverwend, Artopio, Trilight. But my favorite one was always Rhaomi. It was a soundalike corruption of Rome... Rome, Rhome, Rhomi, Rhaomi. I like the sound of it, the "rh" and the "ao". And as a word it's unique -- before I started using it as my online handle, the only place it popped up was as part of a long botanical classification ("Rhaomi/trium /aniuginosumi") and as a mis-scanned word in a Polish text on Google Books ("BИДOMЪ").

And it's pronounced ROW-mee, where the "ROW" rhymes with "cow". Not sure how I established this, though, since I don't think I've ever had to say it out loud...
posted by Rhaomi at 12:09 AM on August 27, 2008

I think it's obvious.
posted by evil, goateed spock at 12:12 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

desjardins: At first, I assumed you were from Quebec, since Desjardins is a pretty common last name here (44th most popular, with .223% of the pop., or around 16,000 people out of around 7.5 million), and French family names are very, very diverse (according to this website, there are less than 4,000 Desjardins out of 64 million people in France).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:17 AM on August 27, 2008

I wish I had a good story, but bendy is my first name with my last initial as its first letter.
posted by bendy at 12:17 AM on August 27, 2008

Someone who used to like me started calling me Hoorhey, that got shortened to Hort and then riffed to Hortense to tease me about a drunken Halloween night in drag in 79. One of the mods over at Jezebel is Hortense proper pronunciation is oarTawns
posted by hortense at 12:19 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm named after The Oaf, a song with a fun guitar part by a band that no longer exists.
posted by oaf at 12:22 AM on August 27, 2008

Little known fact: I don't really even like Rushmore all that much, and I certainly wouldn't use ORthey if I signed up anew. If I ever sign up for a sock puppet while intoxicated it's possible I would use the greatest username I ever saw on weboggle, which was BUTTSEX: IN AMERICA.
posted by ORthey at 12:35 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Nicky is Greek for Victoria. Like Nicky better than Vicky. Buddhist name is kind sky walker. The e is for the internet.
posted by nickyskye at 12:37 AM on August 27, 2008

b33j: Dude, i totally thought it was a reference to Pratchett's librarian. I'm ultra-disappointed.

I didn't discover Pratchett until a few years after I signed up here, but I do take some retroactive joy in the accidental resemblance.
posted by ook at 12:42 AM on August 27, 2008

Job description, mostly.
posted by MythMaker at 12:46 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is the first and last letters of my first name, plus the first letter of my last name. I didn't really spend much time thinking about it, or I might have realized that as per the Looney Tunes character, it might give the impression of a troublemaker wildchild sort. I also didn't imagine that I might end up being "taz" in all sorts of different places on the internet, and that the name might not be that easy to secure... pretty much anywhere. Or that many places insist on names longer than three characters (gmail, for example). Dabitch once gave me the name "tazzle" for something where "taz" was already taken, and if I could go back in time, I think I'd use that.

At any rate, I wanted something connected with my real name, but short and simple, and also kind of fun.
posted by taz at 12:51 AM on August 27, 2008

I lived in Brooklyn longer than I've ever lived any where else. Then I left.

I know I know, it's a ridiculously complex, inside-baseball kind of name that probably comes across as gibberish to anyone who doesn't know the deeply personal, highly involved history behind it...

sarcasm really does not come across well in the space of a comment, does it?
posted by From Bklyn at 12:53 AM on August 27, 2008

Doctor Jimmy. The "11" got added to it when I created my first yahoo account around '97- drjimmy1 and drjimmy2 and so on were taken already.

later i realized it kind of sounded like some bizarre penis reference, but by that point I was stuck with it.
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:00 AM on August 27, 2008

A pronoiac is the opposite of a paranoiac: it's someone who feels like the universe is conspiring, behind their back, to help them. I see evidence for this in AskMe, open source & Web 2.0 sites that don't suck.

Around the 2000 elections, I ran across my username in quick succession in a couple of places: one was likely Charlie Stross' Lobsters, & I think the other was a Yippie profile or something. I think I looked at it as an unlikely suggestion for Bush at the time.

After the 2004 elections, I wanted a decent name for the Neal Stephenson Wiki, & that came to mind. Then, it was more of a suggestion for, uh, pretty much everybody.

About a month after that, I realized I'd chosen a name that started with "pron." I figured I'd stick with it for a bit, & come up with something better, though I haven't, & haven't even tried, really. I still love the concept & want to spread it.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:03 AM on August 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

it is an adverb.
posted by clearly at 2:11 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Unfortunately, whenever I see Bora Horza Gobuchul I'm reminded of John Clute's comment that Bora Horza sounds like "what geldings do to mares".

Theophile Escargot is a character in some books by James Blaylock. He likes eating pies, and is occasionally a pirate.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:19 AM on August 27, 2008

Where is spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints? That name is like the best Before and After Wheel of Fortune puzzle ever. I kept repeating it in my head for hours one day.
posted by clearly at 2:23 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is a misspelling of Mithril that I decided upon on a whim in the dim past of the BBS. On a whim because my up until that point regular, and admittedly mainstream and boring, handle featured prominently in a summer blockbuster and became impossible to procure. It was a very fortuitous accident. I've never not been able to use it as a handle, it's not too long or too short, I dodged the LotR revival, the word has a pleasing shape, and it can be pronounced.

Also it seems to be parsed by some as a juxtaposition of Myth and Real which is kind of cool.
posted by Mitheral at 2:27 AM on August 27, 2008

ask my lawyer.
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:30 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

The Terrible Secret of Space
posted by The Pusher Robot at 2:31 AM on August 27, 2008

No.
posted by fixedgear at 2:55 AM on August 27, 2008

Online, if I don't use my real name, which is long and Polish and makes people go 'huh?', I generally use ephialtes (Athenian statesman, founder of the radical democracy in Athens in the 5th century BC) or zagloba (clever but drunken Polish nobleman in Sienkiewicz's "Trilogy").

When I signed up here I was a bit bored with both of them, so I used "athenian" - I studied the history of the Athenian democracy at university. I've always slightly regretted it as I'm so used to the other two.
posted by athenian at 2:58 AM on August 27, 2008

It is all I have to say.
posted by dirty lies at 2:59 AM on August 27, 2008

I didn't want to use my real name, so I made one up. Plus, without Darwin, I'd still think there was someone you could pray to (which had been the biggest waste of time of my entire life).
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:01 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm named after my mom.
posted by pupdog at 3:59 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine's from this song. The precise reasons why I went for that particular song are now tragically lost in the murk of some long-closed indie club.
posted by flashboy at 4:05 AM on August 27, 2008

Nightwood
posted by nightwood at 4:12 AM on August 27, 2008

When I got this account I had recently purchased a PXL2000 camera and was obsessed with it. And my boyfriend called me "pixie", so I blended the two. If I had to start anew, I probably wouldn't have chosen this name, but there you go.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:20 AM on August 27, 2008

I learned from Microserfs that lego and playmobil figures were called minifigs. I thought it was a decent enough name. And a fig roll dipped in tea is one of life's greatest pleasures.
posted by minifigs at 4:27 AM on August 27, 2008

Thomas J. Wise
posted by thomas j wise at 4:29 AM on August 27, 2008

Ah! So it is like the band!

i like the band too. Pere Ubu were named after Pere Ubu, aka Ubu Roi.

Buddhist name is kind sky walker

hehe, now i'm thinking of Luke Dakini ("Use the Dharma, Luke!")
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:35 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

My name is Dave, and I am generally happy. I started working at a coffee shop where there was another Dave, who, on balance, was generally less cheery than me. He was a supervisor, so it was mostly professional grumpyness rather than misanthropy. But the poor guy got stuck with Grumpy Dave and I got Happy Dave. I used it when I got my Flickr account, and MeFi came just after, so I used it here as well.

So, uh, kind of straightforward and relatively uninteresting, really.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:36 AM on August 27, 2008

My first and last name is the species name of a rare sort of moth. Phalene is french for moth, and sounds pretty.
posted by Phalene at 4:41 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Mine's pretty obvious.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:50 AM on August 27, 2008

It's all about the toast.

Sweet crunchy delicious buttery honey jam tooooooooooooooooooast. Filled with melty savoury cheesey wonder. Topped with avocado and chicken and mayo and cracked pepper.

Not all at once. But maybe all in one day, easy.

It's sort of on my mind, you know?

To recap. I picked t0astie as my intertubes nickname because I like toast a lot.
posted by t0astie at 4:56 AM on August 27, 2008

It's the name of the first man I killed.
posted by ardgedee at 4:56 AM on August 27, 2008

This youtube video will explain everything.
posted by vacapinta at 5:00 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is what I've been asking for for Christmas. Repeatedly.

and when I get my tiny crocodile - and someday I will - it's gonna be so awesome. I'll keep him in my handbag and then when someone annoys me - snap snap! tiny crocodile in the face!
posted by tiny crocodile at 5:05 AM on August 27, 2008 [5 favorites]

pass.
posted by jessamyn at 5:07 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

and if they *really* annoy you?
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:07 AM on August 27, 2008

Rangeboy: You, me, Hemmingway, the shiny tugboat?

As for me:

"One thing I've noticed—I'm curious about this: you're never alone in a room with [him], are you? You're smooth about it, but you're never one-on-one with him. Why's that? Do you think he's psychic, is that it?"

"No. He's an eideteker—he has a remarkable visual memory... but I don't think he's psychic. He wouldn't let Duke test him... that doesn't mean anything, though. He hates to be prodded and poked. So do I."

I'm not psychic, though I seem like it at times. I can do things like pick out friends of friends whom I've never met or even seen in a crowded place (Oh, hey, isn't that your friend Chris?). I'm not telepathic, but I'm fairly perceptive and have been accused of reading minds. Kind of like the early stages of Asimov's second foundation.

And I don't have a 100% eidetic memory. The reason I use that moniker online is that with a computer, a search engine and my livejournal (which is where I first used the name) I can remember almost anything. So I'm not Eideteker, not iRL. WE ARE EIDETEKER, me and my internets.
posted by Eideteker at 5:10 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Mine is the beginning part of my email address from college. (My email addresses up to that point were total crap.)

(Friends of mine included: boralex, bersumm, choheat, schjenn, smibenj, and so on. sperose kinda stuck. My dad thought it was badass.)
posted by sperose at 5:19 AM on August 27, 2008

This username dates back to 2002-ish, I started using it on a BBC messageboard (my portal to the dark evil of the rest of the internet), and it's referencing this Smashing Pumpkins song (lyrics), specifically the line: "How'd I'd love to waste your time/Saturnine". Unfortunately, it's a bit teenager-y (even if the lyrics are still some of my favorites, apply to my identity now and it's not a superfamous song of theirs), and people consistently miss the first "n", making it look as if I picked a username expressing my joy for sitting in piss :(

My second username, because saturnine is usually taken on some high population sites, is "paparatti" - based on an idiotic Kevin Federline quote. Originally used just for Livejournal, it's now got a whole identity of it's own. Bless it.
posted by saturnine at 5:28 AM on August 27, 2008

Acronym. It stands for "vibrating bum-faced goat".
posted by yhbc at 5:32 AM on August 27, 2008

I don't understand.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 5:34 AM on August 27, 2008 [4 favorites]

Acronym. It stands for "vibrating bum-faced goat".

I don't know who told you that, but I think you have been conned.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:39 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's a made up word that sounds nice.

& no one can spell it, which I enjoy.
posted by sondrialiac at 5:48 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm a film geek. Professionally.
posted by filmgeek at 5:50 AM on August 27, 2008

I went to a party once at Reed College that had 71 kegs of beer. My friends and I began to yell "71! 71!" all the time after that day to honor of its greatness. My last name begins with "R" and I yelled that number a lot. So, I got known as Josher 71.
posted by josher71 at 5:52 AM on August 27, 2008

A friend in middle school once tried to tell a group of us a scary story about a demon name Grither that would come and eat you or something. It was poorly told, and we had a good laugh at his expense. Randomly popped into my head years later when I was signing up for AIM (not AOL, just AIM), and it has since stuck.

Usually pretty good because it's not used by other folks much, though there is apparently a band. And also a Tales from the Darkside episode about it. Who knew??
posted by Grither at 5:53 AM on August 27, 2008

WCityMike. WCity = Windy City = Chicago. Mike of Chicago.
posted by WCityMike at 5:59 AM on August 27, 2008

No, really. What is the deal with your nickname?

Just so I don't have to spend time checking each profile individually to amuse myself on slow Metafilter days, I want to know the story behind your username. Spill it.




by the way kim - which design studio is it that you work for ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:09 AM on August 27, 2008

hmmm ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:11 AM on August 27, 2008

Clump of Plinths
posted by plinth at 6:20 AM on August 27, 2008

There's this song called the "Yeti Stomp" on the Backyardigans I saw a few years ago. It made me laugh.
posted by yeti at 6:21 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Most of the names I use are meaningless combinations of letters, but this one has too many meanings.
posted by plant at 6:21 AM on August 27, 2008

Oh... and I learned on that show that yeti don't roar or anything; instead they go, "Yetiyetiyeti!"
posted by yeti at 6:22 AM on August 27, 2008

I didn't want anyone to be surprised when the lights and klaxons went off.
posted by These Penises Are Alarmed at 6:24 AM on August 27, 2008 [7 favorites]

It's a nickname I got as a child from my last name, which is (as you might have guessed) Leach. It's spelled with two l's, though, just like llama.
posted by lleachie at 6:26 AM on August 27, 2008

Huh? I don't understand what you're implying, but that AskMe was from back when I used to be a production artist at an ad agency. I got into a fight with my boss about how to save our files and was looking for stuff to substantiate my argument (I was on the '.eps' side). Anyways, I no longer do design. I'm a grad student in linguistics. And I even GMOFB to prove it all.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:27 AM on August 27, 2008

well thats just lovely - i'm sure you can appreciate why i would ask you about your question, given present circumstances.
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:32 AM on August 27, 2008

I like languages and I wear hats. And yes, one of them is a fedora. You got a problem with that?

felix is latin for "lucky" ... be-tachat is hebrew for "in the ass"

I'd never have guessed the latter, but now that I know, I will read your name as "Felix B. Tuchus" (תּחת is Hebrew taḥath/takhat/tachat and Yiddish tokhes, usually spelled tuchus in English).
posted by languagehat at 6:36 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm not even a huge Pratchett fan, but I was reading one of his books at the time I signed up. I hate thinking of usernames, so about 0.06 seconds of thought went into it.
posted by gaspode at 6:40 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm confused sgt.serenity...is someone unfairly capitalizing on your name, or are you wanting contact info to buy a hat?
posted by iamkimiam at 6:42 AM on August 27, 2008

White, hot, burning letterhatred.
posted by ~ at 6:44 AM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

If you'd like to hear my username spoken in an ominous Dutch accent, skip to about 1:25 of this video.

I dunno, I like the album that song is off of a whole, whole lot. I don't particularly love that song, but I always found the sample hilarious.

Honestly, I have almost no idea why I chose this handle.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 6:51 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

First name + "La Cucaracha"
posted by kirkaracha at 7:03 AM on August 27, 2008

Brevator is the name of a street near where I live. I've always enjoyed the word phonetically and used it for a band name.
posted by brevator at 7:05 AM on August 27, 2008

my initials are rmd. as for the 1023, several years ago i decided i didn't want to have to worry "oh, am i [commonname]1, or 2, or 10, or what" so i went with 1023, which is the highest "well-known" port number (i'm a network wrangler by trade).
posted by rmd1023 at 7:14 AM on August 27, 2008

My dearly departed cat's nickname was "biscotti" (which is a contraction of "pussycat" run through a crazy cat lady filter). Also, biscotti are so crunchy...and are baked twice...just like me. Wait, what?
posted by biscotti at 7:17 AM on August 27, 2008

iamkimiam, sgt.serenity thinks you work(ed) for Shepard Fairey and used his name without permission for a hat. It's pretty obvious that would be a longshot if true and appears to be most definitely false. sgt.serenity, can you apologize to kim and drop it?
posted by mathowie at 7:18 AM on August 27, 2008

My high-school english teacher wouldn't let me name the deity in my creation myth FortyTwo. I showed her, though!

Interestingly, I've only had trouble using this handle in one place. When I first tried to sign up for AIM with this name, I couldn't use it with the reason being not that it was taken, but that it was "forbidden." Years later I successfully signed up a new AIM account with no problem using owtytrof, but it has since fallen to the wayside.
posted by owtytrof at 7:23 AM on August 27, 2008

might should:
1. Identifies my local of origin by usage of the term. Natives of my region speak this way; if a friend was to ever discover my username, it would make perfect sense to them.
2. It expresses my tentative nature. Everything depends - there is no black and white in my world.
3. I like the idea of propogating the use of double modal/helping verbs. Just doing my part to make it mainstream...
posted by mightshould at 7:25 AM on August 27, 2008

I just want it to be my name.
posted by Evangeline at 7:29 AM on August 27, 2008

The "Empress" part: years ago I took one of those goofy "which [x] are you" online quizzes that was meant to identify "which tarot card are you". I got the Empress, and was struck by this quizzes' description of the card -- they made her out to be sort of a laid-back, earth-mother nurturing type, someone who relished simple down-to-earth pleasures like laughter and good food and music and nookie, and who also wanted to nurture and take care of those she cared about, helping them attain the same pleasures as well. Sort of like a cross between Auntie Mame and Mama Cass. It struck me as the kind of person that I was wanting to be, so the "empress" part always stuck with me.

As for "Callipygos" -- that's ancient Greek, and I've heard that the rough translation of that is "great ass." And...yeah.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:30 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm an Aristophanes fan.
posted by lysistrata at 7:30 AM on August 27, 2008

I always thought Eideteker was Eye Detector.

Monday, stony Monday: I don't know exactly where I got "desjardins" from. I think I ran across the last name in a phonebook and I liked it. My real last name is quite obviously Irish.
posted by desjardins at 7:36 AM on August 27, 2008

Kinda a Mullah Nasrudin holy fool type of thing I guess, which is kind of pretentious, which is nice because it serves to remind me that I remain, as always, an asshole.
posted by Divine_Wino at 7:39 AM on August 27, 2008

I am the solar-powered reanimated corpse of an astronaut.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:40 AM on August 27, 2008

My name is fun to say over and over and over and over!
posted by waraw at 7:41 AM on August 27, 2008

McDesjardins, specifically.
posted by cortex at 7:41 AM on August 27, 2008

Just a cool song about a cool car.
posted by rocket88 at 7:50 AM on August 27, 2008

I had been trying to come up with a name for instant messaging and just jammed two of my dorky obsessions together. Violà.
posted by piratebowling at 7:57 AM on August 27, 2008

These were the letters that we typed randomly into the sign-up box.
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys at 8:08 AM on August 27, 2008 [11 favorites]

It was either this, or PompousAss. I was drunk. I lost a bet. Those were the only choices I was given. In retrospect, I'd have liked PompousAss better.
posted by merelyglib at 8:11 AM on August 27, 2008

People generally either love or hate me, I'm often found in the vicinity of Mexican food, and I taste like soap.

Actually I think I had some seed packets on my desk when I was trying to think of a name and cilantro was one of them. Though I have since emigrated from the US to the UK so perhaps I should change it to Coriander.

This thread is not about me, but I find it amusing to pretend otherwise.
posted by cilantro at 8:19 AM on August 27, 2008

My boyfriend (when he wasn't yet my boyfriend) used to say "SIGH, BITTER!" every time I complained about something, which got lengthened into "Sigh, bitter, bitter girl." And so when I went to buy my very first domain, it amused me and there you go. His MeFi username, incidentally (Eddie Devil) is the name of a character in the comic he does with kittens for breakfast. Can't give you any insight on "kittens for breakfast" except that his (ENORMOUS) black cat Mina might have something to say about the username if she catches on...
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:27 AM on August 27, 2008

red-tailed hawk. It's a banding code. I could have picked NOHA (Northern Harrier), or AMKE (American Kestrel), or PEFA (Peregrine Falcon), but I've seen way more RTHAs than any of those, and I like them best anyway.
posted by rtha at 8:28 AM on August 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

Nearly twenty years ago, a friend of mine and I got into a strange habit of having conversations with each other from the perspective of an angel and a demon who had been on earth too long (like Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens), it was around that time, I discovered that a harlequin was a demonic trickster character from street performances of the the middle ages.

I took the name, but dropped the Harle as I live in Wisconsin and didn't want people to think I was referencing the brand of the motorcycle when I wanted to be called something shorter.

It is amusing to me how many names here seem to come from demonic origins. I feel like I'm in good company.
posted by quin at 8:30 AM on August 27, 2008

Well, see, I'm Attila's sister, and I really just joined when I did to say that A. couldn't play that day because he was indisposed (grounded), but then I got to liking you guys, so I stayed, and now he accuses me of stealing his friends and vows vengeance! Whatever, bro. Hunnic Empire? More like Hunnic Mom's Basement.
posted by katillathehun at 8:43 AM on August 27, 2008

It's a nice fifty-cent word. I like rescuing obscure words with elegant meanings. It's fun to say. And I was amused by meta-ness of rescuing desuetude from desuetude.

(Unfortunately, it's very hard to articulate in a noisy bar full of Mefites, usually being misheard as "destitute." Which is why I walked around with desuetude written on my hand at that Cambridge meetup in April.)
posted by desuetude at 8:45 AM on August 27, 2008

I would say it's in the profile, but...it is the profile. ROCK!
posted by kittyprecious at 8:50 AM on August 27, 2008

It's a recondite Holmesian reference, and will always be a recondite Holmesian reference. Daniel Pinkwater can go to hell.
posted by ormondsacker at 8:53 AM on August 27, 2008

Because typing "Scott" takes one extra keystroke.
posted by Skot at 8:54 AM on August 27, 2008

I like interesting looking words, and a phrase I was using frequently at the time I signed up was "what a nightmare". It seemed like most people here had nics that were cool and interesting, so I thought I'd make an effort to fit in.
posted by oneirodynia at 8:56 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine's a Red Dwarf reference (link goes to youtube video of the scene in question).
posted by jozxyqk at 9:07 AM on August 27, 2008

it was my husband's idea for a domain name, which I have since lost :( -- I was playing around with something like "persona", he suggested the "e" for my first name, and then I thought the "ae" ligature was cool-looking. (Although I've never actually used the ligature anywhere.)

it is, however, a complete PITA to use in verbal communication, especially if you want someone to spell, say your email address, correctly.

but it was the name I started using for everything about the time I started getting into doing stuff on the internets, so it pretty much is my internet identity. so much so that when I got a domain name that's my name, I made sure to include "epersonae" in the site's title!

(I too thought felix betachat had something to do with a 2nd cat.)
posted by epersonae at 9:12 AM on August 27, 2008

It's a recondite Holmesian reference, and will always be a recondite Holmesian reference. Daniel Pinkwater can go to hell.

This has piqued my curiosity, Dr. Sacker. Elaborate?
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 9:15 AM on August 27, 2008

Mister Cheese was an Englishman who practiced swordsmanship in the style of Silver (that of the basket hilted single hander). He was noted for the defeat of one Italian rapier master, the style of which Silver was an outspoken critic. I read about him in Terry Brown's English Martial Arts.

I went with something involving the word cheese because I like the cheese, and in fact most of my friends like the cheese. Mmmm, queso.

Also: I consider any other member with cheese in their name to be either my archnemesis or long lost cousin. The categorization is arbitrary.
posted by Mister Cheese at 9:16 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine comes from a childhood joke with a friend. It was funny only to an 8 year old, and stemmed from the phrase, "I don't want to hear a peep out of you two."

It has nothing to do with "peeps" as in people or Peeps®, the vile confection.
posted by peep at 9:18 AM on August 27, 2008

Came from here.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:20 AM on August 27, 2008

In this thread about yelling Freebird in concert, mention was made in the original article of Mike Doughty, of Soul Coughing, "promoting the Weather Girls' 'It's Raining Men' as the new 'Freebird.'" Meanwhile, in the ensuing thread, it was claimed that yelling "Freebird" was devised as a way to torment Florence Henderson in concert. Then the drugs kicked in.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:24 AM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

I used to have it in my profile, so I'll say it here now. It was a nickname that one of my former coworkers gave me. Then another one picked up on it and that's what they called me. They're both gone from my place of employment now and *sniff* I'm still here.
posted by Lynsey at 9:26 AM on August 27, 2008

As a size 18 with 44DD's Holly Golightly was completely out.

Incidentally, for some odd reason desuetude's name will just randomly pop in my head while I'm out at work or shopping-for no reason other than the like how it sounds.
posted by hollygoheavy at 9:28 AM on August 27, 2008

It's the name of the Romuva (Baltic pagan faith) goddess of the woods. And hares.
posted by medeine at 9:31 AM on August 27, 2008

On a sketching trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, I fell in love with squid. It's more than a crush - I now want to be their queen. But first, I feel like I must be some sort of lesser royalty (you know, on the job training). Hence ika いか　(say: EE-kah - squid) hime ひめ　(HEE-may - princess).
posted by ikahime at 9:37 AM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

@ ormondsacker - Just read the explanation in your profile.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 9:38 AM on August 27, 2008

Like many, it was a fairly arbitrary thing. When I first signed up for non-school internet service in 1996 or so, I went for "eatdirt" which I had been compulsively stickering Boston with. It was taken. I tried dirtdirt because I figured I'd remember it. It worked.

There ought to be a little warning on that sign-up thing that says, "You've thought about this for 11 seconds. Are you sure you want to be identified by this name for the rest of your life?"

I guess it could've been worse.
posted by dirtdirt at 9:39 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Once when I was at some temp job one of my coworkers had one of those page-a-day desk calendars with suggested activities of the type supposedly designed to make you think. One day it suggested rearranging the letters of your first name into an anagram representing, I don't remember, your secret identity or something. I always thought nanojath was evocative without actually suggesting any literal . I will reveal today for the first time that my full anagram name is Nanojath Mom Harklaw.
posted by nanojath at 9:48 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is a German word meaning "a supposed improvement that winds up making everything worse."

Seriously, English has the largest vocabulary of any language, and it doesn't have that? Lingua franca mein Arsch.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 9:49 AM on August 27, 2008 [11 favorites]

My screenname is a holdover from a high school handle, and it's pretty much the only one I've ever used online. I had been a local BBS and old school Prodigy user from a pretty young age, so when my high school finally got Net access around 1994/1995 when I was a teenager, it was kind of old hat to me.

But many of my fellow geeks at school were convinced that their now having access to a few select USENET newsgroups, plus some in-school message boards, like totally made them l33t haxxors!!one! And they started posting boasting messages about their supposed geek prowess on the in-school boards, signing their names with ridiculous "hacker" handles. I ended up taunting and mocking them right back on the boards, and would sign my missives "Asparagus the Great", in parody of their idiocy. Unfortunately, some of the intended recipients of the teasing didn't quite get the joke, and my parodic name actually stuck, taken at face value. When my family migrated from Prodigy to AOL (version 2.5? 3.0? it was early on) shortly thereafter, which unlike Prodigy allowed one to pick an actual screenname, "Asparagirl" was the one that I chose. It's stuck ever since.

I did and do rather like that it's not a gender-neutral or gender-ambiguous handle; the Internet needs more women around who are comfortable being "out" online, where the default assumption (moreso back then) is that a poster is male.
posted by Asparagirl at 9:50 AM on August 27, 2008

I will reveal today for the first time that my full anagram name is Nanojath Mom Harklaw.

For a while I also used my full anagram name as an online handle -- it was "Wrinkly and her wombats." I don't use it any more, but it still tickles me in a place I can't reach.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:50 AM on August 27, 2008

I win drinking contests.
posted by chugg at 9:54 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is a German word meaning "a supposed improvement that winds up making everything worse."

Seriously, English has the largest vocabulary of any language, and it doesn't have that?

Deprovement.
posted by vacapinta at 9:55 AM on August 27, 2008

I will read your name as "Felix B. Tuchus"

I am okay with that.
posted by felix betachat at 9:56 AM on August 27, 2008

hollygoheavy, that's awesome. I'm flattered.
posted by desuetude at 10:06 AM on August 27, 2008

I started using karmakaze back in the early 90's on the Red October BBS. I'd picked it because it sounded cool and it's gender neutral. I'd already learned the hard way that being identifiably female online tended to attract idiots. That phenomena faded a bit and I'd gone to being "Zulfiya" (which sounds kind of like my real name, but isn't) or using my initials most of the time Then I joined the HERO Games web forums (Red October had been a fan board for Champions) and decided to use the same nickname because some of the same folks were still around. Then I took to using karmakaze again all over the place. So far it's worked out fairly well.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:11 AM on August 27, 2008

My name's what happened when this guy got himself a hotmail account. Or something. I'm not even much of a classicist, but he is the source of that "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" line which I like.
posted by juv3nal at 10:11 AM on August 27, 2008

Yeah like anybody is still reading the ones all the way down here.
posted by poppo at 10:16 AM on August 27, 2008

It always cracks me up that Juvenal's "watches the watchmen" line gets quoted in such solemn tones. He's talking about fake eunuchs, people!
posted by klangklangston at 10:17 AM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Yeah like anybody is still reading the ones all the way down here.

The unwillingness of people to believe that anybody reads the comments down here is one of the great tragedies of Metafilter. Spill it, poppo.
posted by cortex at 10:23 AM on August 27, 2008

I needed to define a login for the Wetware public UNIX (Interactive UNIX 386/i SVR3) and SyCo when I opened my account back in the 80s. I wound up being ...pacbell!wetware!majick

I decided to continue to use it on The Wave back around the time Laszlo (and The Bat? I don't know if she was involved in the operations or was just dating Laz) took it over; I was using something else completely forgettable at the time. By the time TicTacToe (which I wound up working for) came around and Oxo put up that other MajorBBS which I entirely forget the name of even though I remember Oxo was an Apple employee at the time and was really nice, I'd been using it for years and it wasn't going to go away. At that point I was well enough known locally that it was pointless to change, so I used it everywhere else, too. Other than at the Thrasher Magazine BBS since I wasn't about to change that precious account.

But fundamentally it originated as an arbitrary word of fewer than 8 characters so I could create an account on a UNIX box. To this day I still tend to prefer System V syntax for some things over BSD as a result.

Hm, that BBS documentary guy should interview me one of these days before I forget all this old stuff.
posted by majick at 10:23 AM on August 27, 2008

Yeah like anybody is still reading the ones all the way down here.

Recent Activity means that "all the way down here" isn't really that far down.
posted by jessamyn at 10:26 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

People call me sveske or sveskemus IRL.
posted by sveskemus at 10:38 AM on August 27, 2008

Lekvar is one one or all of the following:

a) A Slavic fruit butter or preserve most often made of prunes, but which may incorporate other fruits.

b) An in-joke incorporated into the limited-run comicbook Instant Piano by the writers and artists, similar to "Potrzebie" in Mad Magazine.

c) A perfectly innocuous word for a perfectly innocuous thing which just happens to sound somewhat schmutzig.
posted by lekvar at 10:38 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm still reading all the way down here (but I trained long hours in the various boyzone and givewell threads; YMMV).

Tell us, poppo!
posted by rtha at 10:41 AM on August 27, 2008

On the internet nobody knows how big I am.
posted by bigbigdog at 10:42 AM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Taken directly from my profile page:

MetaUser: Why the nickname?
BBB: Well, I saw nicknames like "Faint of Butt" and "If I Had An Anus" and "It's Raining Florence Henderson"....
MetaUser: So all the good ones were already taken?
BBB: Right
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 10:57 AM on August 27, 2008

Named after this guy.
posted by the dief at 10:59 AM on August 27, 2008

It always cracks me up that Juvenal's "watches the watchmen" line gets quoted in such solemn tones. He's talking about fake eunuchs, people!

I dunno. Castration seems like pretty serious business.
posted by juv3nal at 11:01 AM on August 27, 2008

I just stuck two random words together to form something that's never taken when I register for something online. It never disappoints. Very boring, though.

Don't tell anyone, but mine is actually a bedroom nickname.
posted by mitzyjalapeno at 11:02 AM on August 27, 2008

I'm happy to expand upon the meaning of my nickname because it gives me a chance to honor my father who was a great dad and here's just one reason why: When I was 6 or 7, my family went to Douglas, AZ to visit the grandparents. As soon as we arrived, my brother and I came down with chicken pox or measles or some such childhood ailment that involved spots, itching, fever and other discomforts.

There was no TV, we were too sick to read to ourselves and the weather was hot, hot, hot (summer in AZ) and my brother and I were confined to the house and soon became bored and querulous.

My dad found two adorable cloth hand puppets that he dubbed Otto Pizzapie (a little grey-haired moustached policeman) and Agatha-magatha (a beak-nosed, blonde-braided peasant woman). He proceeded to crouch at the foot of the bed I was sharing with my brother and entertain us for hours on end with a series of Punch and Judy-like puppet shows that kept us delighted and entertained until we were free of our itchy torment.
posted by agatha_magatha at 11:02 AM on August 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

Deprovement.

...is not in the OED or any of the other big references besides Urban Dictionary. I remain Teutonically smug.

Of course, that's the beauty of English: no word? Make one, get it published somewhere or used on the streets, and the void is filled.

(mein Arsch anyway. It's a nice Arsch.)
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 11:04 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine means nothing.

Except that I have a weird compulsion to rename animals with names that are just slightly different from their real names. I call buffaloes fluffaloes; I call hamsters bamsters; I call octopuses roctopuses...
posted by grumblebee at 11:12 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

You guys read A Prayer for Owen Meany? It's like that. Some day after it all happens you'll go, ahhh, that all makes perfect sense now!
posted by Meatbomb at 11:13 AM on August 27, 2008

It's the Tibetan/Ladakhi word for "monastery." I was thinking specifically of Likir Gompa in Ladakh when I chose it, because I spent one of the most peaceful and profound weeks of my life there, and thinking of that time and place reminds me to be humble, even if the name can kinda sound pretentious in the wrong conversation. (As in oh yeah, dig Mr. Monastery over here with his "wisdom.")

I can't remember why I didn't capitalize it, because obviously I was thinking of a specific, proper-noun kind of place and it was to be employed as a proper-noun name. I think because it was back in the fabled 14,000 era of signups, and you had to really hurry when the window opened if you wanted in.
posted by gompa at 11:17 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine came from a saying I heard and decided to use as a personal reminder of sorts, in terms of what quality of relationship was acceptable to me, after a difficult relationship: "Don't keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit. I'm not a mushroom."
posted by notashroom at 11:21 AM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Like, if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. Jeez!
posted by Durhey at 11:21 AM on August 27, 2008

Was fascinated by the idea of studying marginalia of famous people but marginalia was taken on the site I was into at the time, so I combine marginalia plus the -iana suffix = marginaliana. Then I kept it. It's another one that people don't know how to pronounce when I meet them face to face and I end up getting called "Margeena" a lot.
posted by marginaliana at 11:24 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is a boring nickname from college - my first name starts with a B. Over the past year or so I've lost a bunch of weight though, so I recently have found myself wanting a new nickname/login/handle, but I use this one on almost every site. Le sigh.
posted by Big_B at 11:28 AM on August 27, 2008

Grumblebee: always makes me think of the Grumbleweeds, a MoR comedy musical group who were on Radio 2 a lot when I was a kid, and who are apparently not dead yet.
posted by athenian at 11:39 AM on August 27, 2008

Mine is a German word meaning "a supposed improvement that winds up making everything worse."

Does it surprise anyone that the Germans bothered to come up with a term for that?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:41 AM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I am from the town of Lardfork, Montana, not far from the Little Big Horn battlefield. I am also a man.
posted by The Man from Lardfork at 12:02 PM on August 27, 2008

When some websites ask for my name at registration, I pretend it is my real name, Gene Finder.

Actually, it was a professional description. I ran a rather large DNA Sequencing team back in the genomics heyday, and we found new genes as we sequenced various organisms. Seemed like a good handle for Hotmail at the time, even if it doesn't really apply anymore. If I registered today, I would need to be PowrPointr or MeetingAttendee.
posted by genefinder at 12:13 PM on August 27, 2008

Quoted from my userpage:

My grandmother's name was Konolia. She was kinda the black sheep of the family; married four times, divorced twice, widowed twice, all before she turned fifty. (She lost one husband when he fell asleep on a railroad track and was decapitated. I have seen the newspaper clipping.)

She was skinny as a rail, she drank, and she had a tattoo on her arm, filled in by the time I came along.

She loved me overwhelmingly and unconditionally. I had her wrapped around my little finger. She sang to me-old blues songs, and not a few were a little bawdy. Not in front of my mom, naturally.

She died when I was around fourteen. Turned out she had a tumor that no one, including her, knew she had. Mom found her in bed, dead.

I miss her.
posted by konolia at 12:25 PM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Schyler is my middle name and the name i go by. 523 refers to my favorite numbers, mostly due to The Illuminatus Trilogy numerology.
posted by schyler523 at 12:30 PM on August 27, 2008

Mine is, literally, the Hebrew word for "sorcerer", although that's not exactly why I chose it. When I lived in Israel, my friends and I watched a lot of basketball on TV. One of the announcer's would regularly say, roughly "He's a kosem!" when someone did something particularly impressive. Sort of like "he's slick!"

It was also, I learned later, a derisive chant aimed at Benyamin Netanyahu, and I believe others, though I'm not sure on this point.

Finally, and maybe best, there's a lot of talk of sorcerers and conjurers in Jewish literature. This, for example, from Deuteronomy: "There shall not be found among you one who passes his son or his daughter through the fire, one that uses divination (KOSEM KESAMIM), a soothsayer (M'onen), or an enchanter (U'Menachesh), or a sorcerer (U'Mechasef [related to KSM]); or a charmer (V'Chover Chaver), or one that consults a ghost (V'shoel ov) or a familiar spirit (V'Yid'Oni), or a necromancer (V'Doresh El Ha'Metim)."
posted by kosem at 12:31 PM on August 27, 2008

I used to blog about crime as "the bookhouse boy," but I shortened it because i didn't want to be too obvious in my fanboyhood.
posted by Bookhouse at 12:34 PM on August 27, 2008

(and my last name, dobbs which would have been my preferred handle, was already ably taken)
posted by kosem at 12:37 PM on August 27, 2008

grumblebee : I have a weird compulsion to rename animals with names that are just slightly different from their real names.

And chinchilla are called chimichangas, or elephants are actually phelephants?

I do this too. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
posted by quin at 12:46 PM on August 27, 2008

mathowie was taken.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:48 PM on August 27, 2008

And chinchilla are called chimichangas, or elephants are actually phelephants?

phelephants are DEFINITELY going on the list!

I currently call them ephelants.
posted by grumblebee at 12:56 PM on August 27, 2008

The poem... (sadly, also the title of my trunk novel)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:00 PM on August 27, 2008

Mine is, cleverly, my first name, and the first two letters of my last name. The annoying underscore is only there because, at the time I signed up, spaces weren't allowed in usernames (and there was a character limit too, I think?)

I don't know why I chose it. I hate it, it's shit. I've toyed with the idea of getting another account, but after six years I suppose I should really stick with it. (Though I'm increasingly tempted to switch to my real name - the way Google loves MetaFilter, I'd be able to bury the illiterate halfwit with the same name who just popped up this month, ending a run of 14 happy years of being the only me online.)
posted by jack_mo at 1:04 PM on August 27, 2008

F_H_T:
Nothing personal against D. Pinkwater, sirrah. It's just fun to take drunken swings at beloved cult children's-book authors. That's right, you heard me, Bill Peet! Fuck you!
posted by ormondsacker at 1:04 PM on August 27, 2008

The annoying underscore is only there because, at the time I signed up, spaces weren't allowed in usernames (and there was a character limit too, I think?)

Not true! Well, not the spaces part anyway. Just ask Mordecai Q. Postlethwaite. I don't know if there was initially a character limit or if that came later; I believe it currently stands at 50 characters.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I assumed no spaces were allowed when I signed up too, but it was a non-issue for me. A lot of people with underscores have mentioned that they assumed they couldn't use spaces, actually.
posted by cortex at 1:12 PM on August 27, 2008

I currently call them ephelants.

I've always gone with the old Winnie-the-Pooh derived hephalumps. Not particularly creative, I suppose.
posted by owtytrof at 1:16 PM on August 27, 2008

When I decided I finally wanted an account, after lurking for a year or so, I also decided that I wanted a more interesting user name than I had had in previous online venues, mostly b/c there were already so many cool and interesting user names on MeFi. I was trying to think of one that a) would not be embarrassing since I have my real name in my profile and b) would at least in some way relate to who I am and what I do. I happened to be reading about discourse markers at the time for a paper I was working on, and it seemed to fit. Voilà!
posted by DiscourseMarker at 1:17 PM on August 27, 2008

I just really like plaid.
posted by madforplaid at 1:21 PM on August 27, 2008

I like underscores, they're like little jump ropes for words.
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:22 PM on August 27, 2008 [7 favorites]

I chose my username because angrybeaver was taken.
posted by found missing at 1:23 PM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Latin for squirrel.
posted by sciurus at 1:40 PM on August 27, 2008

Not true!

I stand corrected! Which makes it even worse. I must've just assumed, on the basis that (to my eyes at the time) everyone had short, uncapitalised names with no spaces.
posted by jack_mo at 1:42 PM on August 27, 2008

I have a dog, who in his younger days, used to run around and around the house. We'd all sit on the couch and yell Go! Fargo! Go!

It's an easy name to type, and it's never (knock on wood) taken.
posted by gofargogo at 1:45 PM on August 27, 2008

I love the poet Catullus, KTT are my initials, a the second letter of my first name, thus Kattullus.
posted by Kattullus at 1:45 PM on August 27, 2008

Good grief. I just understood nd¢'s name for the first time.
posted by ~ at 1:47 PM on August 27, 2008

Son's middle name is Thor.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:47 PM on August 27, 2008

Oop, I skipped over your second para, cortex. Thinking back, it was kind of unusual for spaces to be allowed in usernames in them days.
posted by jack_mo at 1:48 PM on August 27, 2008

Also, I'm still annoyed with jack, who is yet to post or comment.
posted by jack_mo at 1:54 PM on August 27, 2008

Eideteker: So, is that quote from Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon?
posted by Pronoiac at 1:57 PM on August 27, 2008

It's the string that my fingers would rattle off if I were shaken awake at 3 in the morning and told "Log in! Log in now!"

josher71: I went to a party once at Reed College that had 71 kegs of beer. My friends and I began to yell "71! 71!" all the time after that day to honor of its greatness.

Hey, I think I worked Beer Security for that party! Still got the T-shirt.
posted by gleuschk at 1:59 PM on August 27, 2008

Wow, Mordecai Q. Postlethwaite is a great name. It's too bad he's a non-entity.
posted by Caduceus at 2:01 PM on August 27, 2008

bob joined the same day jack did, and has been equally silent ever since. Coincidence? Or something more sinister?????
posted by yhbc at 2:01 PM on August 27, 2008

gofargogo = "Go far! Go! Go!"
posted by desjardins at 2:09 PM on August 27, 2008

Nope gofargo = "Go! <> Go!"
posted by gofargogo at 2:11 PM on August 27, 2008

Damn. Sorry I didn't preview..Sigh. My dogs name is Fargo. And he likes to go.
posted by gofargogo at 2:12 PM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I love underscores and spaces equally in usernames, but that usernames are displayed as underline-styled hyperlinks where I most often see them—in comment bylines—means I can never tell at a glance if someone has one or the other. So that's mildly vexing.
posted by cortex at 2:16 PM on August 27, 2008

I picked up the nickname from a co-worker because I am able to remember extremely odd bits of, well, obscure information, but never anything useful or important.

And it makes me feel like a super-hero.
It helps if you elongate every other word: Obscuuuuuuuure Reference Maaaaaaaaan!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 2:16 PM on August 27, 2008

Tom Terriffic's nemesis. I even have my own theme song. Check it out.

Actually, I never saw the cartoon on TV. I had one of the illustrated children's books that was apparently a tie-in product. You see, where and when I grew up, we didn't have a local CBS affiliate (and didn't until after I was grown). So I have a CBS-sized hole in my pop culture knowledge.

It's an appropriate moniker. I often get crabby, and sometimes express it on MetaFilter. Sometimes I even play up to the name a little bit. And my astrological sign is Cancer. But I don't think I'm quite as evil as my namesake.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 2:21 PM on August 27, 2008

bob joined the same day jack did, and has been equally silent ever since. Coincidence? Or something more sinister?????

My Dad is called Bob! Clearly something more sinister - the phantom signer-upper must've been a family enemy with a very mildly devilish plan to annoy me (slightly) and my Dad (not at all).
posted by jack_mo at 2:22 PM on August 27, 2008

That's "Tom Terrific", if you please.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 2:22 PM on August 27, 2008

One of the big catch-phrases was "Crabby Appleton—Rotten to the core!"
posted by Crabby Appleton at 2:24 PM on August 27, 2008

Pronoiac: Red Dragon (the book). I was pleased when the movie came out, because Sir Anthony pronounced it correctly (the way I'd been pronouncing it).

As an undergraduate in psychology, I met John Douglas. I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a profiler, first reading Mindhunter, then the Thomas A. Harris books (no, not that Thomas A. Harris). I quit when I found out they only took FBI agents with 2 years experience, and that there was no way to guarantee coming out of the Academy that you'd even be considered for the position. Probably a good idea, since then all those profiling shows appeared on TV and kids everywhere were asking "how do I become a profiler?"

Yes, I am that guy at parties who points out that in the book, it was amarone, not chianti. I still do the line in Hopkins' voice, of course.

Of course, I love your the meaning behind your handle, and will seek to spread it as much as possible. I've always felt kind of lucky...
posted by Eideteker at 2:29 PM on August 27, 2008

I love underscores and spaces equally in usernames, but that usernames are displayed as underline-styled hyperlinks where I most often see them—in comment bylines—means I can never tell at a glance if someone has one or the other.

*Turns on underlining in preferences, finds own username to be pretty at last, dabs tear from eye with hanky*
posted by jack_mo at 2:31 PM on August 27, 2008

Where is my garmonbozia?

i am   thearm

Let's rock!

posted by Eideteker at 2:32 PM on August 27, 2008

@ ormondsacker: No offense taken! At least you're taking swings at an author of weird (and therefore interesting) books. Taking a swipe at, say, the author of The Babysitter's Club wouldn't be worth the trouble.

(Wanders off to Google "Bill Peet")
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 2:34 PM on August 27, 2008

So, is that quote from Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon?

The latter.
posted by languagehat at 2:35 PM on August 27, 2008

Bah, should have previewed.

Of course, I love your the meaning behind your handle

The earlier form was narapoia (Alan Nelson, 1948).
posted by languagehat at 2:39 PM on August 27, 2008

[ You reading down here, poppo? ]

I tried to use my first name on my very first login online ('89), but it is only three letters, so I looked for a word to 'extend' it, Susurrus. It turned out to be a good analogy for my cyberlife then (the sound of whispering -- across the ether). I still use that name online - but not on metafiter; susurrus was taken.

I tried my second favorite nym, Surfeuse (I am a bodyboarder). That was taken, too. So I ended up with this mongrel-mixed nym. Sigh.
posted by Surfurrus at 2:44 PM on August 27, 2008

Dunno if anyone's still reading this.

I am a sockpuppet (a well researched and outted one, at that) - my primary account's username is a simple alliteration that I developed while yet a nerdish youngling.

This name I developed during the catastrophic failure of my young marriage. My new wife was craving a greater level of social connections outside of our small town. Her brother and sister-in-law had proclaimed the wonders and pleasures of their time spent playing Final Fantasy Online, so I purchased the game for her one fateful Christmas. I, of course, was insanely busy with my new job and had no time to play.
After no more than two months she had developed a full-on addiction to the popular MMO. She would rather play than eat. (Little did I know, she had initiated an extra-marital affair with a fellow player and they had developed plans for her eminent "escape" from her joyless marriage.)

I desperately wanted my wife back, at any cost, so I did the stupidest thing imaginable. I felt that if I could not have her in this world, I would enter this other world and win her back. After all, I was an accomplished and talented gamer - how difficult could it be to grind up a princely character in some online joke of an RPG? I purchased the game at once.

I returned home with it in hand and began installing it on my computer. She was utterly horrified. She railed at me - "Why must you invade even my most personal places? Why do you ruin everything for me?" Bless my noble, foolish heart - for it heard none of her insults but continued on, stoically, into the roaring fire of its own impending martyrdom.
I created a wily thief, a sensitive trickster, eschewing the mightier races and selected a human male - I named him "Tennyson," after our favorite poet. Tennyson, now, I believe, acutely communicates through his own biography the hopeless nature of my earlier life.
I moved into her server, into her nation, San d'Oria.

I struggled to level up - unthinkingly - every single day, for hours and hours. My drowning marriage fueled my stupid desire to build something with this idiotic online game character that she would finally respect and love. She spent her time running around with her new boyfriend and tried her best to ignore me.

Eventually, my life exploded into a million tiny fragments and I lost everything - my unfaithful wife being one of the more minor wounds.

However, during the period in which I struggled through that idiotic game filled with empty people and profoundly useless "friends" - I also created this sockpuppet, for reasons which now evade my memory. And I used my little hero, my desperate little thief, his name - his life, attempting to steal back an unfaithful woman for his cuckolded master dwelling behind the monitor screen, desperately clicking away - I brought him here to metafilter and I named him with an abbreviated version of his true name - I called him Tennyson D'San - of San d'Oria...

But now that feels like it was a million years ago.
posted by Tennyson D'San at 3:02 PM on August 27, 2008 [18 favorites]

About two years ago, I decided that I disliked posting on boards under pseudonyms.
posted by WPW at 3:05 PM on August 27, 2008

I always base screennames on song lyrics. I'm that emo.

I'm thinking of "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" for my next sockpuppet marionette.

Also: I consider any other member with cheese in their name to be either my archnemesis or long lost cousin. The categorization is arbitrary.

I feel the same way when I see any citrus-based user names. Surprisingly, there are several.

Also: I combine "heffalump" with "elephant" and refer to elephants (sometimes) as "heffalants."
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:18 PM on August 27, 2008

Yep - i'm happy to apologise to kim for any confusion and involving her in any valid dispute between myself and the part time californian punk, shepard fairey.
posted by sgt.serenity at 3:51 PM on August 27, 2008

Wait, where am I?
posted by Who_Am_I at 3:52 PM on August 27, 2008

Narapoia? Paranoia turned inside out? Hee.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:54 PM on August 27, 2008

I feel the same way when I see any citrus-based user names.

Hi! And hi to you too.

I ddn't put much thought into it. I was eating one when I signed up.
posted by tangerine at 3:56 PM on August 27, 2008

gingerbeer is Cockney rhyming slang for queer. Also, I like drinking gingerbeer. In fact, I like most things with ginger, and I often have red hair, so it fits in a number of ways.
posted by gingerbeer at 3:57 PM on August 27, 2008

When I was about 10 years old, my mom took me to a laboratory supply shop to get some test tubes or pipettes or something for lab class. The place was fantastic, with all sorts of mysterious apparatuses and strange instruments. While wandering around, I came across a display case with a sizable mound of the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It was an incredibly fine powder, very dense, and its colour was the most intense shade of blue I could imagine. It looked like this, multiplied by 300 million. It seemed to glow with its own inner light and it called to me. I asked for the name of this wondrous substance and the answer came, like the crashing thunder of an Egyptian curse:

"That is COBALT!"
posted by Cobalt at 4:14 PM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

When I decided to join long usernames seemed to be all the rage. I initially chose a W. Burroughs four-word excerpt, but then I changed my mind. So, I was looking for a short ersatz nickname and it kind of suggested itself. It's also pleasing to look at and I like the way it sounds.

After all, an ersatz may not be the same as the original, but it gets the work done.
posted by ersatz at 4:27 PM on August 27, 2008

My sister called me Stew or Stewie or Stew the Moo, or stewbrain or....
And I'm terrific.
posted by Stewriffic at 5:01 PM on August 27, 2008

low self esteem, though.
posted by Stewriffic at 5:01 PM on August 27, 2008

There's a statue of former Boston mayor James Michael Curley at Quincy Market in Boston. I go out of my way to touch the statue's hand every time I pass by. My personal superstition is that by thanking Mayor Curley, the city that has nurtured my family for nearly 400 years will continue to take good care of us. I hope it's true because my first child is slated to be born in Boston this autumn despite the fact that I now live two towns out and there are more convenient hospitals to us.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:25 PM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

For a long time my user profile had

"it should be evident self"

Got tired of that and put the tired grumpy old geek explanation that's there now.

I tried on a few names in the old BBS days - this list has some of them (the others listed there were my husband's)

I finally settled on this one around the time I was diagnosed with dysgraphia. It was mostly an attempt to integrate and embrace the disability rather than curse it and try to "overcome" it. In that respect it's kind of worked.
posted by lysdexic at 5:53 PM on August 27, 2008

Stability is a math term I'm rather fond of. There is slope stability and Gieseker stability, stability conditions in the sense of Bridgeland, and stable categories of modules, to name a few of the different flavors. Meta is a cool adjective.
posted by metastability at 5:56 PM on August 27, 2008

Schlimmbesserung writes "Mine is a German word meaning 'a supposed improvement that winds up making everything worse.'

"Seriously, English has the largest vocabulary of any language, and it doesn't have that? Lingua franca mein Arsch. "

Feature, but you need the right inflection.
posted by Mitheral at 6:10 PM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

My name is Sandra. Regina is latin for Queen. Hence, Queen Sandra.

When I was in grade school, a friend and I were joking around about being rulers, queens, empresses, etc. I took England. At one point I had this elaborate story about how Elizabeth II had stolen the crown from an ancestor and thus was claiming sovereignty that was rightfully mine.

But yeah, ever since grade school I have enjoyed thinking myself a Queen. And I like my first name. Its a great name. I use sandraregina and variants thereof a lot online now.
posted by sandraregina at 6:26 PM on August 27, 2008

Coatlicue is an Aztec mother/destroying goddess, capable of giving life or taking it away whenever she freaking pleases. She has two snakes for a head, wears severed body parts, has dangly nursing boobs, and was impregnanted by a ball of feathers. None of this describes my self-image at all.
posted by Coatlicue at 6:49 PM on August 27, 2008

I used a random word generator.
posted by fuse theorem at 7:09 PM on August 27, 2008

1) medusa was taken (the outrage!!)

2) medusa is traditionally my "burning man name" but in....lessee, 2001 I think it was, I just really felt the need to be a superhero, a superhero of myself, thus = supermedusa (yes, there is a cape!)
posted by supermedusa at 7:16 PM on August 27, 2008

I'm named after a Rhett Miller song. And I wear glasses. and I'm a girl.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 7:25 PM on August 27, 2008

I like otters. But not like you think.
posted by ottereroticist at 7:26 PM on August 27, 2008

Mine is the Grateful Dead's third album. Philosophically it is about rebirth and just as light and darkness were concieved together and are inseperable, we must take the beauty of the rose, along with it's thorns. Truly, I loved the album cover and the 60's were kinda fuzzy
posted by aoxomoxoa at 7:32 PM on August 27, 2008

Back when domain names were expensive, I wanted to come up with some nonsense word that was kind of nursery-rhymey and easy to remember and spell. Only later did I find out (in the form of a grumpy email from a speleologist whose web searches I'd polluted) that it was a real word. I'm not sure why more speleologists don't hate me.
posted by moonmilk at 7:39 PM on August 27, 2008

I spent a favourite birthday in an RPG tournament as a dwarven thief named Durn Bronzefist. My g/f at the time won the tourney, we were crowned "king and queen", and I went home to presents and cake. A good day.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:03 PM on August 27, 2008

I'm a goddamn robot.
posted by iamabot at 8:04 PM on August 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

A guy named Howard started calling me Lynnster in 1989; it caught on. Oh, and I have a ginormous case of divorce avoidance.

Put 'em together & there ya go.
posted by miss lynnster at 8:07 PM on August 27, 2008

I host vaudeville in a men's room.
posted by jonmc at 8:45 PM on August 27, 2008 [9 favorites]

St. John Chrysostom.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:57 PM on August 27, 2008

I used to get two newspapers delivered every morning and always have had a couple of piles of books around me. In my lurking years I often saw places where I could jump in and comment with a factoid from something I had just read.

Eventually I dove in, but without much thought to my name.

I think dirtdirt's suggestion should be on the sign up page - "There ought to be a little warning on that sign-up thing that says, "You've thought about this for 11 seconds. Are you sure you want to be identified by this name for the rest of your life?"
posted by readery at 9:10 PM on August 27, 2008

Hippie-punk-geek. It was early in college--I was still experimenting with self-definition, and registered in a hurry so I could jump into a discussion. I still like the way the syllables sound, though, because it's like hippogriff.

Other places I'm gimblegyre, after two of my favorite poems. That's what I'd pick if I had a do-over.
posted by hippugeek at 9:29 PM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Mine came about as a reference to the first Blogger layout I used. I didn't have a blog name as such, but I did have an elf in my header graphic. So, when I got linked by another blogger she linked to me as 'elfgirl'.

Ta da.
posted by elfgirl at 9:34 PM on August 27, 2008

I ran across mine in a list of funny palindromes. I forget where I saw the list, but I just loved the image of an oozy rat in a sanitary zoo. It seemed like such a fish-out-of-water thing. Seeing as I always feel out of place wherever I go, the nickname was a good way to embrace my outsider status.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 9:35 PM on August 27, 2008

oozy rat: Bob by Weird Al?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:41 PM on August 27, 2008

Can I just say Wow and also Zowie about this thread? Cause I figured most people just picked their names out of the blue. I never figured there'd be so many cool stories and associations.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:13 PM on August 27, 2008

I used to have a very interesting handle, which was also my nickname (used frequently enough that some of my friends did not actually know my real name). It was given to me by a friend's big sister, who used to make fun of me because I was too lazy to get haircuts with any great frequency. By the time I got to my junior year of high school, I'd gotten used to it, and I kind of looked the part, so I adopted it, even introducing myself with the nickname. It was far easier to remember than my actual name, which is simultaneously boring and hard for people to spell (especially because they don't expect it to be hard to spell).

It was a somewhat inappropriate nickname for a number of reasons, including the fact that it was decidedly feminine. (For the record, I am neither female, nor particularly feminine.) When I used it online, everyone almost always assumed I was female and treated me accordingly. Being able to speak from experience about how women (or those perceived as women) were treated online seemed a decent trade off for having to put up with it (especially considering I didn't have to deal with it in the rest of my life).

Eventually, however, I realized that the story of how I got the nickname was pretty unsatisfying to anyone who asked about it, as they usually just wanted to know how I ended up with a feminine nickname. I got bored of telling a story nobody really wanted to hear in the first place. I was also tired of everyone assuming that I would be into drugs just from looking at me, and the nickname didn't help at all.

Besides, I needed a more multipurpose handle that I could use for more professional situations in addition to my usual internet buffoonery. So I took the most pronounceable mash-up of my first and last names and went with that.
posted by ErWenn at 10:20 PM on August 27, 2008

Once when I was at some temp job one of my coworkers had one of those page-a-day desk calendars with suggested activities of the type supposedly designed to make you think. One day it suggested rearranging the letters of your first name into an anagram representing, I don't remember, your secret identity or something.

JESUS. I just realized an anagram of my first name is DR. ANAL.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:24 PM on August 27, 2008 [3 favorites]

Other places I'm gimblegyre, after two of my favorite poems. That's what I'd pick if I had a do-over.

Excellent taste in poetry, I've got to say.
posted by Caduceus at 10:31 PM on August 27, 2008

I just thought it had a good flow.

It's surprisingly hard to type, though.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:35 PM on August 27, 2008

My own thread here.

Angrybeaver is a snarling nationalistic rodent. His username is not based on any sexual innuendo, cartoon mammals, nor his gender.
posted by angrybeaver at 10:48 PM on August 27, 2008

Mine comes from the liner notes to the wonderful Mountain Goats album, Full Force Galesburg, quoted below in its entirety because it is a beautiful bit of writing. The interesting line was originally the name of a short-lived, more idea than reality blog I had that was to deal with the withering, interesting, engaged, and critical Left in the US. The blog withered, I aged, the Left I yearn for is still mostly dead, but the username lives on, though sometimes I worry that it lacks personality.

IF THERE IS ONE THING I LOVE it's the weather this year: how it swings suddenly the wrong way just long enough to confuse the geese, who figure, what with the way the air's warmed up on a given day, that winter's over. North they go, and i hear them from where I am. They sing happily, flying in a looser formation than you'd think evolution would allow. They're headed home.

A FEW DAYS LATER, OF COURSE, the elements remember what they're about, and the clouds come closer to the earth than they should, and the fog hangs heavy on the ground, and i hear the sound again and look up: here they come again, flying much lower now and calling to one another for fear that one of them will get lost in their hasty retreat southward. It is now the middle of winter.

SOON IT WILL BE COLD ENOUGH to keep them south until the Spring thaw. It will be so cold that we will almost forget them. We will imagine that we have been this cold throughout our entire lives. We haven't. One fine day they will soar through the skies above our small town again, heading North, and the full sun will be bright behind them. The humid air will stick to us like a death in the family. The geese will sing with a joy that even our dreams will never approach.

WE MAY FREEZE, BUT WE WILL NEVER GO NUMB. In the summer we tend to forget this, and if an unexpected cold front frosts the crops we fear for our lives. We need not worry. The real danger lies, as we should have learned by now, elsewhere. There is a burning that not even a midwestern winter can kill.
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:50 PM on August 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I, along with my sidekick Ensign Sine, defend the good people of the galaxy from the sinister and anarchistic Tangents, which are hell-bent on steering civilization away from the even flow of peaks and troughs!
posted by captain cosine at 3:00 AM on August 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

"JESUS. I just realized an anagram of my first name is DR. ANAL."

You should appear in one of pronoiac's films.
posted by Eideteker at 4:49 AM on August 28, 2008

I did a research paper on Morphine for my high school chemistry class. When I signed up for MeFi this was the first thing that popped in my head.

Should have used subscripts...
posted by C17H19NO3 at 5:13 AM on August 28, 2008

It's my initials. This was the first place I used it and I had tried for so long to get in here during the great lock-out (14kers represent!) that, when the great moment finally arrived, I had not given a single thought to who I would be. Having not a shred of creativity, I became a shadow of my real self. Now, it's become something of a nickname in real life as well. When I try to sign up somewhere that has minimum character requirements, I am therealdg or similar.
posted by dg at 5:17 AM on August 28, 2008

I knew the internet was full of snark and vitriol so I thought my first real nickname on it should be innocent and adorable.
posted by sweetkid at 5:35 AM on August 28, 2008

Well now there's REALLY no one reading the comments all the way down here

In group houses in college and afterwards, I was the responsible one, making sure the bills got paid and whatnot, so everyone called me Pop, Poppy, or Pops, or Poppo
posted by poppo at 6:08 AM on August 28, 2008

Picture Ozzy Osbourne--bloated, drunk, unstable 80s Ozzy--dressed in tails and a top hat, stirring a bathtub full of bootleg hooch with a rowboat oar. Uncle Ozzy's Olde Tyme Bathtub Gin will make you lose your mind and, maybe, go blind.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:54 AM on August 28, 2008

ninthart = ninth art, or what the French sometimes call comics. I'm a pretentious, elitist, Comics Journal-reading fanboy (i.e. I love the medium, but hate 99% of comics produced).
posted by ninthart at 7:10 AM on August 28, 2008

uncleozzy, it took me ages to realize that your nic was uncle_ozzy. For some reason, my mind always parsed it as un_cleo_zzy (don't ask me why, I have no idea) and I mentally shorthanded it un-cleo whenever I saw one of your comments.

I'm better now.
posted by quin at 7:17 AM on August 28, 2008

Oh yeah, nobody ever parses my name right the first time around. I don't know why.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:37 AM on August 28, 2008

I chose mine because I wanted something a bit arcane with a hint of the mystical.
posted by leftcoastbob at 7:37 AM on August 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

First two letters of my first name and first two letters of my middle name. The email address I use here is the first two letters of my first, middle, and last names, but I like to pretend that it is Japanese.
posted by amro at 7:43 AM on August 28, 2008

cribbed from a SNL skit. Additionally, a similar rationale to CunningLinguist.
posted by craven_morhead at 8:08 AM on August 28, 2008

uncleozzy: "Oh yeah, nobody ever parses my name right the first time around. I don't know why."

I just fell for it too. I think we are conditioned to recognize the first two letters, "un", as a bound morpheme, modifying the next word, which we recognize as "cleo". Then we get to "zzy" and realize we've fucked up.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:11 AM on August 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

"a bound morpheme" -- if I ever got a sockpuppet, that's what I'd name it. :)
posted by epersonae at 9:15 AM on August 28, 2008

I really wanted to be Guy Inagorillasuit, which I am in other places, but when trying to register under that name I screwed up the process and had to settle for the monkey suit.

It's a little tight across the shoulders.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 9:42 AM on August 28, 2008

Fell in love with a building.
posted by carbide at 11:26 AM on August 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

No, really. What is the deal with your nickname?

Five fish, same as in town.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:04 PM on August 28, 2008

Looks like it's fish time... fisch is my husband's last name and red is the color my hair was, once upon a time.
posted by redfisch at 12:58 PM on August 28, 2008

My profile says: it sounds like a musical instrument, but is not. "rebar" and "fricative" were taken. "rebar" and "fricative" are two other words that sound nice.

What my profile doesn't say is that my first choice, also already taken, was an abbreviation of a name I use elsewhere. The abbreviation? "pb." Just my luck, I thought.
posted by clavicle at 1:17 PM on August 28, 2008

A Pea, some Tea, a Tear and a Griffin happened to be in the room at the time, so I combined the sounds to come up with my name.
posted by ChabonJabon at 2:26 PM on August 28, 2008

I'm a big fan of The Thin Man films and really enjoy Myrna Loy's work.
Plus I'm a female, or I would have taken Nick Charles.
posted by NoraCharles at 2:34 PM on August 28, 2008

I've been using "the great big mulp" as a username in various places for the past ten years or so. I'm not sure what a "mulp" is, but if I'm a great big one, then they must be pretty small. I was probably stoned or tripping when I came up with it.

Years later, someone told me that a mulp sounded like something orange and fuzzy, which led me to notice that it was simply plum spelled backwards.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 4:43 PM on August 28, 2008

Mine's a reference to a movie, but I can't tell you the details without spoiling the movie for you.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:12 PM on August 28, 2008

Really creeping along the wainscot down here...I wish, wish, wish very hard indeed that I'd never used what are fairly obviously both my full real names. Nothing to do with wanting anonymity. I just think it makes me look priggish and a bit strange. I just got the etiquette utterly, totally backwards when I signed up. (Which is typical, actually).
Anyway, I've been dying to say that for years.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 5:32 PM on August 28, 2008

My grandmother, with whom I shared a very close relationship, loved Jimmy Durante. She thought he was soo funny. Her favorite song was "Hot Patatta," which is just about the hokiest song I have ever heard. But Grams was a dear, so Hot Patatta eventually grew on me, too.
posted by HotPatatta at 5:33 PM on August 28, 2008

Jody, just spend the $5 and buy a new account. I think "creeping along the wainscot" is an adorable username!
posted by ottereroticist at 5:39 PM on August 28, 2008

I decided to have dogs instead of human children. Yes, I am a medical marvel, but the government doesn't want you to know about me.
posted by dogmom at 7:18 PM on August 28, 2008

1. Because of the two consecutive summers I spent reading A Thousand Plateaus, I fell in love with anything modified by the word 'minor,' which could be commutated to 'minus' if one wasn't too picky.

2. My real name is a SI unit of measurement not currently recognized by about 90% of the people I meet, is a constant source of consternation and corrected mis-spellings/mispronunciations, and therefore not my first choice for a user name in most cases.

3. Part of my [excuse my minor* embarrassment here] astrological profile suggests that I can become colder than motherloving space if pressured emotionally. Glacial. And with wind chill temperatures being measured in Celsius and not my name, well, what can I tell you? I'm advocating for Metric System Temperatures? I'm quick and can be cold? All of this is a way of obfuscating the number 58, or 5 times 10 plus 2-to-the-3rd power minus* 2? I don't even post here that often, so, uh, yeah...

*See? See? Obsessed.
posted by Minus215Cee at 7:38 PM on August 28, 2008

I like meerkats. A lot.
posted by meerkatty at 7:46 PM on August 28, 2008

Name of my first solo album.
posted by chimaera at 7:47 PM on August 28, 2008

It was a loving, affectionate nickname given to me by friends who thought that I resembled the manipulative, psychopathic, murderous, alcoholic, child molesting sociopath who ultimately kills himself in Dostoevky's The Possessed.

Wait a minute...
posted by stavrogin at 9:04 PM on August 28, 2008

The Odyssey, Homer.

see also Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.


I used to partake of different incarnations of the metaphorical lotus, and I no longer do so.

ex-lotus eater.
posted by exlotuseater at 9:32 PM on August 28, 2008

In high school I took moodiness to new levels. Gear is a corruption of my surname, and my friends took to calling me subgear when I was in my deepest zoned-out mood.

What do I win?
posted by subgear at 12:12 AM on August 29, 2008

Mine's a cunning disguise (knits brow).
posted by flabdablet's sock puppet at 4:46 AM on August 29, 2008

It's my initials. (I'm a "III," unfortunately.)
posted by hjo3 at 5:01 AM on August 29, 2008

Our name does not exist.
posted by the Cabal at 5:56 AM on August 29, 2008

I started using this name back in 1992 when I first discovered dial-up BBSs and (later) Usenet. I was a huge Warren Zevon fan at the time, and it's the title of one of his albums that came out around then.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:23 AM on August 29, 2008

I have been listening to that Warren Zevon song in heavy rotation this week. Kismet!
posted by jessamyn at 6:39 AM on August 29, 2008

One of the big catch-phrases was "Crabby Appleton—Rotten to the core!"

Great cartoon... Isotope Feeney would make a fantastic nn in here!
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 8:39 AM on August 29, 2008

Yes, really.
posted by Skorgu at 8:34 PM on August 29, 2008

Get that cat out of here.
posted by flabdablet at 4:42 AM on August 30, 2008

It's from the movie Gilda, where one character says "Statistics show that there are more women in the world than anything else--except insects."
posted by exceptinsects at 8:43 PM on August 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I smell poorly.
posted by Mercaptan at 9:20 PM on September 2, 2008

I've been away for a week, and wonder if I've missed the boat. My first choice was a great name, going back to college, when I had back surgery and walked with a lurch/limp for a week or so, and was called Torgo by pretty much all of my friends. Sadly, someone nabbed that, so I went with the best Giant Monster EVER.

Also, my beany baby King Ghidorah was sitting on my desk when I was trying to think up a name after finding my first choice taken.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:29 AM on September 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

My character on a Lord-of-the-Rings-themed MUSH died and I needed a new name for a character that was going to play an orc. This sounded appropriate and easy for orcish tongues to pronounce.
posted by nihraguk at 10:25 PM on September 3, 2008