How did you choose your username?

[Z of the Na'vi]

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

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

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

 

[happyninja42]

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

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

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

 

[Rahkshi500]

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

 

[Sellon88]

My first account online was a thing called "My LEGO Network" and I wanted to make a skeleton Avatar Called "Skellon" and forgot the K and added 88 because someone probably also tried (and fail like me) to make Skellon. Honestly it kinda stuckBut I also Go By "The Flying Toaster" from a child's dream of making a TV network.

 

[TheRussian]

It was a nickname my friends in high school gave me. We would be playing Halo in our Electronics or Engineering class, and my friends would go: "There goes the Russian!" When they killed me or I killed them they'd go: "The Russian got me!" So yea, pretty simple, and I have never bothered to change it, even though recent events make me ashamed of being Russian.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I enjoy Spyro the Dragon and I frequently can't think clearly.
I misspelled befuddled because I thought it made sense.
I'm a sheep that can't think clearly, I'm lucky I can spell at all!

 

[Rebel_Raven]

From playing Armored Core back in 1997, round abouts. In that game you played as an unnamed, mysterious pilot of an "armored core" a highly customizable mech. This pilot was among other pilots called Ravens.

There was a thing in the game where if you lost enough money by failing missions, you were subjected to a program called "Human plus" and afterwards your name was turned into "Rebel" with some digits, and you gained some nifty power, and ths could be repeated a half dozen times or so, and even happened in several other Armored Cores..

Thus, Rebel Raven.

But I've always had a rebellious streak, dark, asian hair, and a thing for collecting stuff. Dark haired people oft get called "crow" in anime, and crow are like Ravens. So, yeah.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Used to play CoD with a group of online friends when I was little shit. Kept taking one guy's kills and he frequently said "Thanks Captain Killsteal". Having CpT x just looked a little more memorable, but not pretentious like xxXXISW4G420SC0P3ZzIXXxx, so so I stuck with it.
It would have been Alecazam, but apparently that was already taken on Xbox Live. I now use Alecazam mostly. My First name is Alec and a friend in primary (grade) school came up with the name "Alecazam the Magic Man". Been thinking of changing but I just can't bring come up with a good enough reason.

 

[VanQ]

My username has followed me all the way to now from the 90s. It has a bit of a history behind it.

I started out as Vanquish in Battle.net during the Warcraft II days.
In those days, you would type "QQ" to people that were bitching when they lost/things weren't going their way. /QQ was the command to quit match and close the game.
I apparently was notorious enough that people started calling me "VanQQish" so I changed my name and I rolled with that for a few years
Fast forward to WoW and everyone in my guild just called me "Vanq".
I got so used to it that I now even respond to the name "Vanq" in real life when friends call me by it so I go by that now but leave the Q capitalized as a nod to my early days.

So yeah, that's the story behind how I became VanQ.

 

[Fijiman]

Back in like 2009 when I used to visit sites like Miniclip a lot I would occasionally post my score to the leaderboards. One day I decided to stop using my actual name and use something else. I believe I had recently watched the animated Sinbad movie on TV in which several of the characters mention going to Fiji and the word had just stuck in my head. And son the name Fijiman was born, however I stopped visiting Miniclip and it was several years before I picked up the name Fijiman again. I don't use it everywhere though as this is pretty much the only forum I visit and I already had accounts set up for places like YouTube and XBL before I picked the name back up.

 

[FruitBird]

I'm a Kiwi (slang for New Zealander.) We have kiwifruit, and kiwi birds, therefore FruitBird!

 

[LostCrusader]

It was the name I made up for my paladin in Diablo 2 and I liked it enough that it became my go to name.

 

[Slenn]

It's just my first name spelled backwards plus an "n".
My Steam name is Zolarian, which is also the name of my main in WoW. It comes from an old game called Solarian, just with a "Z".

 

[Coach Morrison]

I used to play Dota 2 with a group when I first started at the game. At one point a game was paused cause one of our guys lost connection. During the pause we started talking in all chat and the enemy team asked us if we were a stack. The people I was with joked that we were a high school dota team and I added that I was their 40 yr old coach. At that time I had been using names involving Bob Dole because I wanted a new name but couldn't think of one I wanted to use regularly.

Later after the game I decided it would be something would coach and ended up choosing Morrison after adding a few letters to a coach from high school's name. About a week later I realized why the name sounded familiar when I googled the name of the singer from The Doors.

 

[DFDelta]

Mine consists of 2 parts (doh), each with its own history.
The first one, the DF, stands for Daniel Ferel, which is the name I've been using in SciFi RPGs and the like since I was 8 or 9 years old. Daniel is my own first name, and the Ferel might be a misspelled Feral, don't really remember since it was far too long ago.
I've been using that name for a lot of stuff since then. For example I released Doom 2, Heretic and Hexen maps under that name, back in the very early days of the internets.

The Delta part came a few years later, when the first Unreal was released, the first FPS that I remember to have played online.
Me and some friends had the idea to name ourselves after greek letters, and I've chosen Delta because it starts with a D, and I always liked how it sounds. Also its a badass triangle.
A year later, in Unreal Tournament, only one of my friends was left playing with me on a regular basis, but we still used the old names Omega and Delta, and we had a few favorite servers where we kicked *** on a regular basis.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, how did the DF and Delta become connected you might ask.

Well, around that time I got together with some guys that happened to also play on our favorite servers regularly, and we decided to tag ourselves. Thus the "Dominating Force" was born, (a rather silly name, but we were young and stupid) and my name became -=|DF|Delta|=-. Our little association, it could not really be called a clan, had a few servers where we would meet 2 or 3 times a week to kick *** and chew bubblegum.
That whole thing held together for a good 3 years, which might have been the greatest days of gaming I've ever experienced, but then suddenly one after the other dropped out or left, and over just 4 or so months the whole thing collapsed. One guy just disappeared without any sign why, one moved together with his long term girlfriend who could no stand "those brutal games", so he had to stop playing them (lol... sissy), and so on.
When we finally decided to "disband and move on" I did not want to lose the name that I've kept for so long now, and one of the other survivors pointed out that the initials of the nickname I'm using when I upload UT maps, and our clan tag are identical, so I could just change the meaning behind the DF.
And so I did.


So DFDelta is a combination of a name I've been using in RPGs for a longer time then some people I know have lived, the first name I've ever used in an online FPS, and the tag of my very first clan.

 

[Serinanth]

It just popped in there, typically the dragons of Pern have th endings to their names.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I believe I've answered this question before. It's the name I came up with when trying to imagine a Canadian Transformer (or a Canadian-themed Transformer). Incidentally he transforms into a snowmobile.

 

[jayjaykoolaid]

When I was a young lad and I entered my first forum, I needed a name. My dad was setting up the account for me. I asked him to make the name "jayjaycoola" which he called stupid and said "You're Jayjaykoolaid now son." Now it's my online name for everything. I'm very fond of it.

 

[GOWONZU]

I made mine for xbox live aaaggges ago and just stuck with it.

GOWONZU
(Gears Of War OwNZ U)

I havent played Gears of War for ages, I never even got to play 3. But I kept the username and use it for everything.