where did you get your handle from?

[sundance]

i know, i know, it's been done before, but not for ages. so what's the etymology of your handle?

mine is nothing to do with the cowboy/robert redford/ the tv staion or the film festival.

my dad called me sundance once instead of 'sunshine' like he usually does, so i decided to use that, as i had been after a net handle and had been using iceman

[HonkyPunch]

jimmies...hmm...back in my ut days, i was always Poochy the nali cow, and one day, i joined a server, and the cow was blocked. Thus, i created a robot named jimmies, later, when i got into conker, i made it that jimmies is a squirrel...just an alternate name.

[MoP]

It's not "emm-oh-pea", it's "mop".
Long and silly story, nothing to do with cleaning utensils, any famous Metallica songs, or the hip-hop/rap group.
It's closer to its original incarnation over on CGChat, where I am "moppius".

[ScoobyDoofus]

Mostly because I liked ScoobyDoo since it was originally on the air (before it was "hip" again).
And I'm a friggan retard.
Thus, ScoobyDoofus was born.

[Josh_Singh]

Ghost Rider is a dude with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle and whips you with a chain. nuff said.

[Daz]

edit: Lol MoP I had no idea.

It's really just my name. I've tried to explain this before to friends out here in the US but it's hard since it isn't really very logical. In Britain often a name that has 2 syllables divided by an 'r', gets abbreviated by having the last syllable replaced with a 'z'.
Such as 'Darren=Daz, Gary=Gaz, Barry=Baz' etc. The formula is weird. 'Terry' for instance doesn't work in the same way. It is abbreviated to 'Tel'. I have no idea why.

[Jeff Parrott]

In school I had a teacher that used to call me Jethro. My friends just started calling me that and it eventually turned into Jeffro.

[cholden]

My name is chris holden, so it's just C. Holden. My concept was "how lame can I make this handle?" and cholden came out of it. If these new boards showed up a few months earlier, I would have gone with "choad". It's not near as cool as my cgtalk nickname, GraduisCancer.

[MoP]

Nobody used to call you Dee-Ay-Zee when you had the first and last letter capitalised on the old forums, did they Daz? I've heard too many people say "Oh, you're M-O-P, right?".
Perhaps I should switch to all lower case, avoid the confusion...

[Ryno]

When playing football (american-style) in high scool, I was known as a vicious hitter that couldn't be stopped, like a Rhino. My name is Ryan, so somewhere along the line it got the bastardized spelling of Ryno.

In college, the nickname was independently resurrected by a bunch of my martial arts budies, who thought that I sparred and fought pretty much as I had played football. 230 pounds of aggression coming straight at you! "Ryno" once again foot the bill, and I've used it or an extended derivative, "RynoGreene" for gameplaying, messageboards, etc. ever since.

[Hooker with a Penis]

Tool song (Hooker with a Penis). I liked the name and what it meant, so I just stole it.

[Slayerjerman]

Friend used to call me jer-man (real name jerry) and I've always used 'slayer'...

before that i used just 'slayer' or during quake1 games i used 'megaforce'...for the longest time in BF1942 i went by Alien_Anal_Probe...now i just use JerryP

Was rather intereting when i joined a game with another JerryP...lol

[thnom]

As explained in the real name thread - its just 'Thom' with N from Nicholas to scandanvian'-ize' it. This is because I wanted it more like my Surname.

Edit: Its just 'Tom' not 'th-nom' or 'f-nom' (due to its origin- think of it like a silent N just like Gnome is the only word with a silent G /images/graemlins/smile.gif )

[ElysiumGX]

Greek Mythology. Elysium was a section of the Underworld, Hades. The Elysian fields were the final resting place of the souls of the heroic virtuous. See also: The grassy scene at the end of Gladiator. I like the idea of having your own personal paradise, and attempting to make it a reality. Only after fulfilling your purpose can you reach it. A place where you can be at peace. Much more motivating than the heaven and hell story, or being saved. Plus two letters from my old name to personalize it.

[rooster]

hm rooster has been my nick for 10 years or so, but its origin is quite mundane and pointless so I will opt for keeping it secret in an attempt to make it seem more interesting /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

and as for my sloth avatar.. well I just relate to those guys and their expressions are brilliant.

[snemmy]

needed a name to play Q2DM with. was using Reaper but there are 346593 trillion Reapers out there. i was listening to a new cd by this new band, Orgy - Candyass, was like nothing id heard before and i loved it, was inspired by them and wanted to take my name from something on the cd, so i looked at the track name and mis-read the first title of the track, there are no spaces between track names. so "socialenemies" was read as SocialNemesis. then when i went on #model_design my name was too long so i shortened it to SocialNem, then SNemesis and then everyone started to call me snemmy for short and here i am.

[Paolo]

no handle here

[The3DGuy]

back when i had aol in the early 90's you could create screen names and delete them as you wished. went throught several... TheBear13 TheLion13 reason for bear and lion is my older brother and his friends kept calling dogs Bears and cats Lions, who knows why. well once i started messing with 3d stuff i kept the same pattern with keeping "the" as the first part of the word. "The3D" tried alot of things but AOL wouldn't accept them for some reason or another. Guy just popped in my mind. Maybe i was thinking of Guy Smiley from sesame street? but the name has stuck.

[flaagan]

back when i was into graphic design (about four years ago) i went by the nickname 'cuda', which refers to the car I've been restoring over the years. in order to cut ties with people in that group (had a bit of a falling out) i dropped that nickname.
everyone refers to me by my last name, Flaagan, instead of my first name, James, so I just picked that up for here and elsewhere. (so dont piss me off, cause I dont want to have to change my name /images/graemlins/tongue.gif)

[Mishra]

magic the gathering : /
i played it some years ago frequently and used it one time in my aim handle and it stuck so its my internet alias now : /

[PaK]

I'm the only male cousin in my extended family (Patel's) who's mom is from pakistan, so, my cousin's called me pak-rat (a play on hood-rat I guess, we were all way into hip-hop growing up)

I always thought it was a cool nick name.

-R

[aesir]

norse mythology

[RageUnleashed]

Mine is an old corny name used for gaming, it stuck, but I think I will be changing out of it because it doesn't really portray my personality. Would anyone like to work with someone who's personality reflected Rage Unleashed? Probably not haha

[skankerzero]

back home, I was the best at MarioKart 64. I would often backstab the people I had temporary alliances with in the game just so I could win. In most competitive activities, I can do some pretty lowball stuff. Anyways, my friends would call me a 'skank' or a 'skanker'. Basically, 'he who is a skank'. (it was not chosen because of the dance or ska music)

So that stuck. Then I tried to get an email address at some place with the name 'skanker'. It was taken, so they suggested 'skanker02' etc. I said, screw that, I want to be first. So I chose 0.

so it turned into 'skankerzero', and it stuck.

[Sectaurs]

Very first long-lost memory I researched when I got the internets back in '99.

http://www.80scartoons.net/images/sectaurs.jpg

[Snowfly]

A map from a videogame.. Snowfly Forest in Vagrant Story. Most annoying game level i've ever had to navigate but damn the soundtrack was catchy.

[Seyiji]

Mine is a total bastardization of the name "Shinji Ikari" from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

[DeathTrip]

I really liked StaticX's "WisconsinDeathTrip" so I started using WisconsinDeathTrip as my username all over. But from playing games online/message boards people thought I was from Wisconsin so other people from WI would ask where I lived in WI or other people would call me a farmer. So I dropped the "Wisconsin" part.

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/09/2f/348816-resized200.JPG

[ElysiumGX]

[ QUOTE ]
I really liked StaticX's "WisconsinDeathTrip"

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't think of that. I got my AIM and email GrindonitX from "I am".

[Soccerman18]

I've played soccer for years, since the comics all have characters like superman, batman, I went with soccerman. And of course I had to add a number to it cause some moron already took it, so I went with 18 which was my jersey number. Thought about changing it a while back, but I figure everyone already knows me by that, plus I have no clue what to change it to.

[Dukester]

my cat got the name from John Wayne and I got the name from my cat

[Moz]

Mosquito, from the ww2 fighter bomber> which became mozzie/mossie> then just moz.

[poopinmymouth]

When I was in high school it was the usual lame fare, but when it came time to create an online persona and delve into the graphics world, I put some thought into the mechanics behind it. I knew it would be the only name many people would know me by, and that I wanted a very memorable one. I saw a million cutesy or clever names that were engineered to be easy to remember. So many that it was no longer easy to remember because they were all cutesy and clevar. I knew something with shock value would stick out. Poopinmymouth is a leftover phrase from high school which came to mean, embarrass someone in front of a ton of people. I also like that it's very immature, and I think that gives a good idea of what I'm like in real life.

[Irritant]

Ghostrider: Believe it or not, I once owned Ghostrider #1. I think I had the first couple of them actually.

Poopinmymouth: Believe it or not, I recorded a punk band a few years back called Weamal Deamal, who had a song with your name.

My handle, came when Q1 came out, and I needed a name for playing DM. I was in a band who had a song called "Irritant" that I really liked, and thought it was fitting for my style of play.

[Whargoul]

It's a character in a Gwar song of the same name. It's got great lines such as:

Then I tried to drink myself to death
40 years went by, and drunken I was left

[Nerd Groupie]

I was 3D Guy's date to Harl and Tins' wedding. I was refered to as a "polycount groupie". When it came time to join the board, I wanted something more universal that I could use on all boards. Plus nerds are KEWL. *swoon*

[MoP]

I GOT MY HANDLE OFF A PAN, HAHAHA I'M SO FUNNY!

[AstroZombie]

"Astro Zombies" is one of my favorite Misfits' songs and The Misfits are one of my favorite bands.

[Creamy_Goodness]

> When I first started playing Quake2 deathmatch, I wanted to pick a cutesy type name, because such a name would be uncommon and humorously out of place in a deathmatch arena, and also because people tend to think you're less of a challenge with such a name, or at least that's what I thought at the time. I suppose it's also because cute things just appeal to me, or something like that. The two names that stuck out were Pink FuzzyBunny and Creamy Goodness. I ended up choosing Creamy Goodness between the two, because that was the name of a South Park character, and I wanted to express my love for the show.

[killingpeople]

<-- it's usually the goal in video games.
i got it from my friend weston's email address, that which was inspired by my aol screen name.. but i stole it.

[Negadeth]

It's the name of my all-time favourite band with a different first letter!

It's pretty unique too, I haven't seen anyone else who uses it. Much better than my old name Soul Reaper.

[Ribking]

1991 - University of the Arts - Philly
Fashion was alot different back then....I had many, many large turtleneck kinda-sweatshirts. They all had these kinda-ridges. A good friend of mine said I looked like a condom and told everyone that I was ribbed....for her pleasure. Since it seems that I was the only one who wore turtlenecky-ribbed-sweatshirts, I was called the Ribking.

Has nothing to do with meat. But I do serve it up well on the grill.

[flachdrache]

@Astro - ha, i knew it. /images/graemlins/grin.gif
@Nega - Soul Reaper is so much better and well known. Changeitback, please. /images/graemlins/ooo.gif

Flachdrache is the (funny) german translation of LowDragon.
There are no hills in north germany so the land is pretty "low/flach". /images/graemlins/laugh.gif
LowDragon started as T.L.D.(Tiamath Low Dragon) Highscore nick for videogames
and i closed my posts with LD untill someone told me that LD also means "LevelDesigner"
which was to generic for posting my stuff (and disturbing). /images/graemlins/confused.gif

To make a long story short - iam into material arts and a very angry man. /images/graemlins/mad.gif /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[adam]

My name is Adam Bromell. I wanted a NEW name (since joining Polycount I've had 2 other names - 'milk' and 'joi') and wanted something not-so-far from my real name.

I use "brome" when gaming or talking in mIRC so AdamBrome seemed fitting.

[cochtl]

Cochey is my first name and i have a "t" and an "l" in my middle and last name, hence the name "Cochtl"

My face is going to melt off.

[frosty]

I used to originally be tank275, about 10 years ago, when I first went online with an independent internet provider, which was rare then, I eventually stumbled onto polycount from a link of the Q2 mapper Renegade and then I took like 8 months to finally settle on frosty, sheesh talk about girls taking a long time to make up their minds. My other choices I had was like considering Orion or Hunter, Hunter of course is used by our PC beloved Policeman Hunter. Drama Queen would prolly worked for me too.

Frosty is thus born out of a distance relative's name and not wanting to associate much with my Gestapo Mum, I did not incorporate her Maiden name and not my current since I don't think my Da is my REAL Father. So I ended up frosty.

Hi Soccerman18!

[JonMurphy]

My parents gave me it /images/graemlins/wink.gif

The art handle BurntKona (when I release stuff once in a blue moon): I ride a '97 Kona Lavadome.

Kona is also connected with coffee, so my PC cottage is the coffee house. I love the smell of coffee.... hmm, roasted beans /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Lore]

Very long and weird story, so I spare you to details. Regardless this is the same handle I use on Usenet and the Raymond E. Feist mailing list. Not a wise choice to use here I could have used others. But in the most part it has to do with StarTrek and no I’m not a Trek fan. It’s a sort of ridicule.

Speaking of handle’s or “nicknames” and Ben mentioning of high school days. My nickname back then was “beef” dating back to first grade. When I was a senior in High school I had an actual freshmen thought that was the name my parents gave me. I just laughed at him and walked away leaving him to his confusion. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[swampbug]

I sat in German class. writting tons of possible quake names I could use. Swampbug was the one I put a star next to.

The reason why I think i chose the name subconsciously is..

Quake 1 was the first game I was amazed by the water and I loved to swim around in it. Often times the water had an ambient Swamp sound with bugs and frogs making a racket.

So swampbug has exsisted in some way since the first time I saw water in quake1.

/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Dio]

Short for Dionysus the greek god of wine, used by Niechie to describe the free form uninhibited expression side of art in "The Birth of Tragedy". Its proved to be a pain when I use team speak in mmorpg's and realized most of my guild thought the pronunciation is like Neo with a d, as if my name was inspired by an over rated French-Canadian vocalist.

[Kevin Johnstone]

The Watchmen and then I considered that the magic of a Rorschach was that it was a creation that was something
different to whomever looked upon it and I thought thats very much how a piece of art is so I began making what I
considered a new type of artstyle that combined Rorschach like images with Celtic banding tattoo styles.

I dropped the C from the spelling in the hopes of making the name identifiable only to me.
When I began skinning and realised that most gameart is based upon mirrored imagery I knew it was the perfect name
for me and that's why I haven't ditched it, its my art name now I think.

r.

[mr.toast]

"where did you get your handle from?"

i was born with it

[r13]

it comes from star wars rogue squadron. 12 people in a squad, and i'm 13. which means i'm not in the squad cause i suckzors. picked it up while playing the first xwing game, back in the mid 90's.

[pogonip]

Mine comes from an ancient indian word meaning White Death . In the place where I come from the frost that settles on the trees and makes the landscape blanketed in a white frost is called pogonip. I always thought it was a cool word .

[Sett]

My nic now was though up in about 3sec. I had to create an account for the Tournament.com boards and for some reason the word set came to mind as in let,set,get (programming terms) I doubled the T at the end cuz the board needed a 4 letter min. I guess it's like Redd Foxx -whatever.
I think it sounds pretentious but I guess I'm stuck with it.

My old BBS nic was Winston_Smith. I should of stuck with that.

[Jackablade]

Hammerite Compendium of Precepts, Regimens and Rules of Conduct, Vol. 94: 'Guard thy tongue from falsehood as thou gardest thy purse from a Jackablade.'

Not sure why exactly I decided to go around calling myself a pickpocket, but I decided that it had to be my handle the moment I read it in Thief: The Dark Project. I also needed a change 'Charnel Desire' seeing as no one ever seemed to get my carefully crafted play on words.

[danr]

it used to be my email address for years - danr@whereveriworkedormydomesticisp ... but recently my work one has changed to some grim full-name-with-a-dot-in-it affair, and no ISPs seem to have it free any more.

[eXpendabLe]

came from years of getting my butt kicked online. No matter what game or world I played in.. I just felt "expendable"

[mr.toast]

got mine from a tv show, and thought it was worthy to replace it over my old name, which was Phil McCrackin

[parasite7]

parasite7 came from a song title from my favorite band as a kid, KISS. and 7 comes from my little league number.

but parasyticmoon is broken down parasytic=tic and moon=luna so in essence the company name is lunatic.

[moose]

moose is a family nickname. Everyone on my pop's side of the family calls me 'Moosey' or 'Moose' or some derivative, since my pop's name is Maury as well (well, we call him Maurice - "Mar-iss" "Mar-see"), so somehow i ended up with the nick Moose.

ive also gone by:

SatanicFalcon: from the pantera Vulger video, one small segment where phill hangs out a window "HOLY SHIT ITS THE SATANIC FALCON" as some car wizes by.

and

Dr. Intenso: one of my college drinking buddies came up with this, after i started calling him Sgt. Salisbury... i started this game called "jump in the air, fall on the ground," causing mahem on the porch. After i had taunted about 20 random people walking by with the game i got that name.

[Jes]

"Jes"per Mortensen..

Old-school coin-machines didn't take more than 3 letters, so Jes was the obvious choice (being I was 8 back then)... Guess it stuck with me ever since. /images/graemlins/shocked.gif

[Thegodzero]

Always liked the number zero as its nothing but yet we count it. So used zero as my call sign of playng games, then when i came here i changed to thegodzero because i liked the idea of being te god of nothing.

Oh and i just found out yeah, there was also a myth about thegodzero, hes the creator and bringer of numbers. Makes sense if you think about it, before you can get to one you have to start at zero.

[TomDunne]

I didn't reply to this thread right away because it's been so long, the details are fuzzy. Alas, I first used this name online more than ten years ago, so the details remain fuzzy. I started with Gold, which lasted a few months in 1994, and then decided I needed something 'more aggressive' for whatever MUD I was playing at the time, thus I chose Vermilion (which I no longer bother capitalizing). Why I decided colors were the way to go I can't quite explain.

The name I use in the event vermilion is taken in whatever online thing I'm into is Exsanguine - plucked that one out of the air in 1996, a bastardized form of the term for removing blood from a body. No, I'm not a vampire fan or anything, I just thought I was very clever back then due to my ability to read and write in Latin (see what parochial education brings a man to?) I didn't even know it was an actual word at the time (which it is).

[ScreaminBubba]

Mine came from the term "screamin" for someone being blatently obvious about something.

Was in the car with my wife and we saw this guy who was your typical rednek good ol' boy, and I said "man, that guy's just screamin' bubba."

"ScreaminBubba. Hmm."

It stuck. It's also a pun. I pass for rednek pretty easy, even though I'm far from it.

I'm ScreaminBubba.

[Foehammer]

Foehammer, I got the name from Halo, Foehammer is one of the pilots in the first game and she dies later in one of the books. Found out later that it was also in LOTR one of Gandalf's swords is named Foehammer the yackity shmackity or something.

I also use Ak3K, short for ASSKICKER3000, which was an upgrade from the asskicker2000 model which i started using because "Spoon" was taken in many of the online games I played at the time.

[Justin Meisse]

This is my real name but it used to be Ysgalon. I wanted something lovecraftian so I just tried stringing a bunch of consonants together. People shortened it to Ysg and I stuck with that.

[Joshua Stubbles]

From a classic Dean Koontz novel /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[nealb4me]

Mine was given to me by my best friend, Neal is my real name. This was about 4-5 years ago when Q3 was the hot new thing and I started getting into gaming *tear* /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Hollowmind]

No real story behind mine. Was trying to think up a cool band name when I was a teenager and I came up with Hollowmind. I've stuck with it ever since. I initially thought if it as meaning soulless, not empty headed. I know hollowheart would've been better to take as meaning soulless but that just sounds too gay and emo, hehe.

[JO420]

hmmm JO420 how did i come up with that,i forgot where really /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Mark Dygert]

Back when I first got internet access I tried creating names, the first was batman but it was taken, the next was vigilante, that was taken. So I spelled it Vigialanti and it went thru. I couldn't remember how I had spelled it so I shortened it to Vig.

Since that is a borring story I now just say "Vig is the margin a bookie makes off of bets (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&oi=defmore&q=define:VIG)." I am the no loose money maker, why bet when you can have a sure thing? And other such nonsense.

[Weiser_Cain]

Penname, sounds good when I say and since it isn't my real name I can say or create just about anything non-criminal that I want and still go into politics later.

[Kirin]

Kirin:

Well ... it's been ages since I've had this nick. I think it dates back to the first Ranma 1/2 movie with that guy that's the head of the Seven Lucky Gods Martial Arts. I thought it sounded cool so I adopted it. Much later, I was browsing around the internet just to see what the name really meant and it dates back to the days of Confucious. Kirin is said to be a mythical Chinese unicorn that brings good luck.

[RazorBladder]

I started off here around 4/5 years ago at real young age and I had an obsession with DBZ at the time so an unoriginal Vegeta 666 was spawned for a while.
About 2 years later Raz0rBlade came about out of thin air really, depressing :/
For the past 2 years I decided to change it as I felt the nick was rather depressing and whatnot after growing out of the ol' angsty teenager crap. So I wanted something more uplifting and sommat that would perhaps get some kinda reaction so I altered the nick to RazorBladder with the inspiration of a day when I must've visited the lav 15 times.
Has stuck since and I doubt it's gonna change.

[Mojo2k]

i've had many many nicks in my day, from Snotie, Chunklite, Syphelus 3Dog when i first came to #model_design i picked the name Mojo_dojo a slight take on the powerpuff girls villian mojo_jojo, but there was already a Dojo in the channel and i caused confusion, so i changed to mojo_Jojo for a while, sometimes just going by mojo, then in the year 2000 i got my new pc and really got focused on game art, and updated my name to mojo2000 ir mojo2k...

its anoying cause i've really wanted to change my nick for a long long time.. but this just keeps stickin...

SCREW IT!@! i'm changing it now!@@!@!

[Rhinokey]

HAAHAHAH I DID CHANGE IT!

this nick is from the wuzzles cartoon, a half rhinocerous, half monkey. http://www.mojo2k.com/rhinokey35.jpg

[jzero]

I've made up alternate names for myself since about age 6. Never thought my actual name was that cool. Mostly, they have served as the alias for that alternate side of me that is the person I would be if I could do whatever the hell I wanted, all the time.

I used to go through these aliases every few years. So a few years back, I needed a new one. I was working closely with a couple of programmers, doing my first game art, making assets, and numbering all the sequences starting with '0'. That was cool. So I started thinking about how zero is both the first and the last, the origin and the void, all that existential crap.

So 'John Zero' I became. I say that it's my 'nom de guerre' (http://www.wordsmith.org/words/nom_de_guerre.html), the name people call you when you're a shadowy underground guerilla leader, or whatever. Or else my 'nom du ordinateur'. Come to find, 'jzero' is pretty good handle as a username. It's often unique, but when it's not, 'johnzero' or 'radiumskull' are mighty efficacious.

I don't think the guys at Sketch Group are completely sure of my real name.

Mojo: Tell us about 'Meandalethesnail ' --!!

/jzero

[hawken]

B&Q

hardware department, near the doors

[Rhinokey]

ahhhh the origin of "Meandalethesnail"

once i was trying to get a yahoo im acocunt, and every varriation imaginable of "mojo" was taken, then every varriation of everything else i wanted, so finaly i said "i bet MeanDaleTheSnail" is not taken! and it wasn't