Well, I don't know if this has been discussed before, and I'm too lazy to research.
So, why did you choose your username?

I chose 'Cherry' because, well, it's my real firstname (and I like it very much ). And when I started hanging on the net I was young I couldn't come up with something more original to use and so it stuck.
But now-a-days I've got other usernames as well, though Cherry's still my favorite.

For some obscure reason, I rarely use my correct name on forums, etc., but I still want it to be something which I am called or something like that..

So I picked AnKS, which is actually a nickname some have called me time and again. It is also a combination of my first, middle and last names.

Ankit Kumar Srivastava

Interesting post, Cherry

Well, actually my real name is my username, but I chose Shadow as my displayed name because I very rarely use my real name on message boards. But oh well, I think if you guys were really axe-murders (darnit, did I just blow the secret?) you probably would have 86'ed me by now. I'm still kind of attached to Shadow though, so I kept it. I tend to lurk a lot and hide in the shadows...more so during work and school, depending on my schedule...

JD

Yeah, there's a very old thread on the subject somewhere around. But it's always nice to revisit these things from time to time, as more new members arrive. Lurkers, you too.

I had a lot of fun re-visiting that thread and laughing at some of the posts. So thanks for the nostalgia trip too, Cherry.

LabRat

Fun! And has anyone noticed? The original thread was begun on April 25th, 2003! How time flies...

PJ

When we first got an Internet connection, the guy from the PC store came home to help us get started, and, since I am the PC freak of the family, he would offer his advice to me.
So, he said that the first thing an Internet user must do is get an email account. He took me to in.gr, which was free and in Greek. Then to the "Register" screen, and said "Now you need a name to register with... what's your last name?" I said, "Botsakou". "Ok, then you can use abotsakou." I had no reason to disagree, so my first email account was abotsakou@in.gr and my password was an idea he gave me.

Since then, in most of the sites I register I use abotsakou and that same password.

L&C-wise, now, when I was first registered at Zoom's, I used "Anna_B.". Then, after deciding it was a tad unfortunate to be the second Anna B., I named myself Anna B. the Greek (and signed as AnnaBtG.). I actually like the letter G, it's one of my favourites and it doesn't even exist in the Greek alphabet!

I also have the nickname "Anouk" I use in some chatrooms, on some other board and in RL. This was given to me by my (then) best friend. She had just watched the movie "Chocolat" and thought that Anouk (the name of a little girl in the movie) sounded a lot like Anna. Many good friends of mine call me that, since then

Bored yet?
See ya,
AnnaBtG.

P.S.: Cherry, I love your name!! I would have liked to have a more unusual name. Anna is quite common. But it means "grace", so it suits me and I won't complain See ya.

Oooh! Great thread, Cherry!! And thanks, Lab, for the link to the old thread. I had a great time reading everyone's stories... not to mention I smiled like a big loon when I read this:

Thanks, Lab!!!

Then I had to ROTFL when I read this:

Anyway... On to my story:

For those that don't know, I'm one of those "Old Fogey FoLCs"

A few people through the years have called me "Krafty" and Wendy's since brought it back into style.

And of course, there were the oh-so "clever" people in school who thought it was funny to call me "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese." :rolleyes:

Sara (who still dreams of the day when she's got enough money to buy a brand new car complete with "SKFOLC" vanity plates. )

I'm the opposite of Shadow, my display name is my real name while my user name is a nick name. I usually go by hanemg other places on the net, but somehow when I registered for this site I messed up and it displayed my real name. I actually kind of like it that way though since hanemg isn't actually a real word.

That was my very first user name back in college before the existence of the internet. The college I went to took the first 4 letters of your last name and then your first and middle initials and made that your account name.

The system was actually a Prime system and if anyone is familiar with them you know it was kind of a primitive internet system on it's own. The entire campus was linked up and we could email, instant message and even had message boards. I never really thought about it before, but I think that was really my first attempt at writing. I used to post on a board that was one big round robin story that anyone and everyone could contribute to. My contribution was an intergalactic assassin named "Bob". It just struck me as ironic and humorous to name a blood thirsty, violent killer for hire with a name that sounded like someone you would invite over for a cook out.

Did I mention I was a bit of a geek in college?

*In college?!" my dear wife would ask at this point.

TJ is the name I go by in life cause I hate my real name. Gruffs is a moniker I added from the gruffy demeanor I adopted when I played around on "Caption This!" on Scifi's old MST3K sight. My caps were usually mean, thus the "Gruffs" stuck.

TEEEEEJ is just the name people call me when they don't want to say two separate letters, T and J, too much work I guess, plus I like being called TEEEEJ, it's like some soulname kinda sound thing I'm attached to.

There, now you know.

TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEJ

I use my initials because I cant remember my name...

Well, I wanted something shifty like TennesseeTwister, purely because I thought it was cool (at the time), but for some reason it didn't work. Ttycoon was a cheapo second choice. My real username is weird-DPDBLUEchief-named after a weird game my weird friends and I play (basically, we make fun of our SMALL town's HUGE police department). But the story behind it was too long, and I wanted at least a normal username for my FoLCs so...yeah.

Sarah

PS I wish mine was cool, too!

Well Kaylee is not my name although I really like it so it'd be cool if it was. A friend of mine picked it for me when I started going on IRC way back and I guess it stuck. I've never posted my real name before but it's Jackie.

Julie Stars is not my real name. When I first got on the internet I was about 11... and I remember reading a list of rules for children - one of which was never to reveal your full first name on the net. That one made an impression on me. Of course, I've grown up since <g> but I still don't reveal my last name (I've told some people my first name, and used it on a forum too, before, however).

I chose a different first name because I didn't like mine. Simple. <g> I chose Julie because I was once a huge Julie Andrews fan - still am, but to a smaller degree - and the name stuck with me. I once remember trying to log in to the boards and freaking out because I was out even after several tries... when I noticed that instead of Julie Stars I'd typed in Julie Andrews. Felt kind of dumb. <g> After more than a year of being a Julie, I don't associate it with anything other than my name anymore. I feel like this name is mine, just like my real name is.

Stars has no significance, except my extreme unoriginality with fibbed last names.

For accounts on websites I have a different set username - Combatgirl1988. Combat comes from the combat training (sort of <g>) I've had as a cadet. Girl, because I'm a girl and 1988 is my year of birth.

Julie

When I first hopped onto the internet back in the summer of 1997...I had the screen name MsLoisette. Lady Loisette was already taken and "Soul Mates" is one of my favorite episodes!

MsLoisette was actually my email for AOL while I used it under my dad's account. People got to me know me as that and then my dad took my account away because I was on the internet too much. lol!

Fortunately, I was able to get an account of my own and I came up with LoisLane9397.

I've been called Lois in the past by people because they know I love the show and also because I share a lot of her personality traits.

I choose 9397 because those represent the years of LNCTNAOS. Teri Hatcher is my favorite version of Lois so I wanted to honor that and my love for a show that will never die!

Mine's just my first name and last initial.

I have thought about using a username, but when I got my first e-mail account, every single thing I thought of had been taken, and sometimes there were over 100 people using those names. I didn't want to be a username9999.

Sometimes I add 1701 after my name if it's taken because I can remember it; it's the serial number of the starship Enterprise.

LOL, Emily - I share your frustration. Way back, when I was trying to set up a yahoo account, I got mighty fed up trying various variations of LabRat and getting the message 'already in use'.

Finally, in a fit of temper, I typed 'RatTicked'. Unfortunately, and to my great surprise, it went through and I was stuck with it forever after.

LabRat

I choose Roo b/c to me that is my real name...not legal though. There's a story, but I don't want to make you fall asleep.
My legal name is Ruth Anne (I'm not sure if that is my whole first name or first and middle name) and Rue was a shortened version. I changed it to Roo b/c for some reason I got a bad vibe from people when it was spelled Rue.
I added Super b/c I needed a pick me up one day and that was my name at my work...my old work now. YAY. SuperRoo the McDonald's maanger...
Roo is a name very dear to me.

Why didn't I use my real name? Combination of factors, really, the two most pressing being that I abhor my real name and that it had already been used. I didn't want to be confused with the other person... kind of ironic now you think about it <g>. I've always loved the name Sara, so that was what I picked... and just a while ago, I changed it to the Irish form [Sorcha] because Ms Kraft was complaining about how people mixed us up

My nick on IRC, farneighgirl is really boring and unimaginative <g> Farneigh is the region where I'm from [field, tree, cow, person, in that order ] and so... It was originally farneygal, both for pronounciation purposes and because of the nick restriction that used to be on IRC

Sorcha

Uuh, why I use my full real name here? I don't know exactly, it was probably a spontaneous decision at my signup here. Usually I'm surfing the web with my login-name dreamy_betty or simply Bettina which is usually not available anymore.

In my teen and twen years I was called something that could be translated as 'sweets', though that's more a guess than an accurate translation from a local dialect. Oh, I feel so old now that I've written that Anyways, I'm happy that this nickname was buried after a job-related move.

I'm like Emily - my nick is simply the name everyone calls me (but which is not actually my first name) and my last initial.

I'd originally intended to be highly paranoid on the internet and keep all such stuff as my name and personal information secret. But now I've pretty much blown it and any decent Google search will tell more than anyone would ever want to know. So much for anonymity.

Lynn

Interesting post!!

When I first came online as a FoLC in late '94/early '95, I had a hard time picking a nickname. So I resorted to something simple. "Super" for obvious reasons, to pay tribute to my lifelong fascination with everything Superman and "GEM" because those are my initials. No big story there LOL. I've stuck with it ever since.

Oh boy, I really took a break from forums. I think two weeks? Wow . . . Anyhew, on this topic, I put the name Doranwen together myself. I had tried a variety of names, most of them Celtic-based (Cornish names are lovely). I'd tried Elestren for a while, but then that e-mail account started charging, so . . . and somewhere around the same time, or maybe before, I decided to get a Yahoo account, and had to come up with something I would always remember, and would be easy to work with. And I put together my name. I think I thought "doran" meant healer, which is similar to its real name. It's of Scottish origin, I believe, related to the word "dorus", or door, but in this case it supposedly means someone who connects, in a metaphysical/spiritual way . . . ack, it's hard to explain. Read the book Wise Child, by Monica Furlough, I believe is the author--it's where I got it. I took it in the sense of a healer, one whose presence is beneficial to people, because that is what I wanted to be in essence (not to be confused with a life work), just in who I was. And "-wen" is a Welsh name ending meaning "white, fair, pure", etc. So I combined a word and an ending from two rather different branches of Celtic language (Irish, Scottish, and Manx Gaelic are from the Goidelic branch, whereas Welsh, Breton, and Cornish are from the Brythonic branch, often referred to as the Q-celtic and P-celtic branches for a certain sound-change that separated them hundreds of years ago) . . .

It's unique enough that I've NEVER had problems with anyone else having it--though maybe that's not so great either, since if you do a google search on "Doranwen", you'll find plenty about me, at least on my interests. The three pages show that I'm into Lois & Clark, Smallville, certain computer software, Sims 2, movie soundtracks, and conlanging . . . Yahoo search reveals I'm also into folk music. And NONE of those references were to anyone BUT me, lol. Guess I'm not very anonymous.

And I've wasted WAY too much time tonight on other forums, and only posted one or two things here at most, but it's almost 3 so I'm going to bed.

Doranwen

It belatedly occurred to me that as others were mentioning their usernames on other forums, alongside this one, I actually had something new to contribute.

So:

I'm Albion on my Stargate forum and among the general SG1 community. I had spent some time searching the net for names of gods and goddesses that had Scots or Celtic roots and then finally just decided to go with that.

I'm dklabrat on Yahoo and Ebay - just because LabRat was already taken and Doc Klein's LabRat was too long.

During the firefighters' strike here in the UK, a bit back, I was Battleaxe on the campaign forum. Self-explanatory really. Was kind of proud of that one.

And I recently joined a gardening mbs. I love pottering around the garden in the summer and would love to be more knowledgeable, but know zip about the subject. So thought I'd join a group that has expert knowledge and use them as a sounding board. Isn't the net a wonderful thing?

It's paid off already in that I was finally able to identify one of my favourite plants in my garden - had been trying to find out what it was on and off for years on the net without any luck. But those guys nailed it in a day. For those interested <g> it's Andromeda Forest Flame. A species of Pieris.

Anyway, over there, I'm Greenpaws. <g> Green, for obvious reasons and..well, I'm a LabRat, so I don't have fingers.

Anyone else want to branch out a little and tell us what usernames they use elsewhere and why?

LabRat

Well, I've got two other usernames: Cherazor and Tjejy.

I mainly use Cherazor because it's one of my RPG characters. My favorite, actually. She's silly, has an IQ below peanut and is quite a randome character. XD
Cherazor isn't really my character's name, it's her callsign. And I wasn't the one to come up with it, so don't blame me for this very...ahem...strange callsign. Cherazor is built on two words Cherry and Razor.
And, well... it sort of stuck.

Tjejy is one of my Swedish friends doing. She wanted to give me a nickname, which showed to be quite impossible until she got the idea to pronounce my name in such a childish way as possible. Well, it sounded something like "Scheejjyyy" - and in Swedish the easiest way to spell that sound is Tjejy. So, there you have it. ^^

Okay. I'm done.

I was watching a documentary about fear, why we have fears, how it affects our bodies blah blah blah. It's all to do with some gland in our brain, anyway to show its effects they removed this gland from some monkeys and put them in dangerous environments to see how they would react. And well, they were fearless and they rocked!

Well.............

When I was five, my older brother had a batman costume, and I decided that I *HAD* to wear it all the time...getting the nickname "batgirl" and I graduated in 2004...so its really not that interesting, but if you'd see the pics of me as a little kid wearing the batman outfit you'd get it lol