Hmm...there doesn't appear to be a 'General discussions' board so i'll post up here.

There's lots of griping about not being able to use custom avatars. Fair enough.

But i was browsing about and it struck me there are some strange and interesting names on the boards.

So...why did you pick the names you've chosen? Do they have meaning for you?

Thought it would be interesting to know how you came by the names you all did...

'Tis a story I've told on several occasions.

Years ago, Unreal Tournament was my online game of choice. I was in secondary school at the time, and picked an online alias that seemed appropriate. Unreal Tournament brought up the name of your target when your crosshairs passed over them, so "N0-1_H3r3" - translated as "No-one here" seemed both suitable and slightly silly.

It stuck - I've never encountered anyone else using it, and I've signed up to so many forums over the years using that alias that it's sort of become my default online moniker (in various forms - some services don't allow certain characters, so I've also appeared as N01H3r3, N0-1H3r3, N01_H3r3, n01_h3r3 and pretty much every other combination there is).

It's an evolution of my old internet name which I realised was slightly stupid a few years back. It's what you get for sticking with something you made up when you were 13.

It's my real name, translated into Sindarin. Yes, I'm a Tolkien geek.

I've used a number of variations of it over the years- back when I frequented Bolter & Chainsword, I went by Brother-Sergeant Alasseo, I'm Lt. Alasseo Nal, IN over on Port Maw,and I've used Alasseon, Alasserin and Alassero on a couple of boards, with various character variations. The most outre is, I believe, aLa5530, which I think is my Youtube account. I lose track.

Way back in the day of IRC I was merely "Kage" (pretentious, I know, but I was a fan of Shadowrun at the time and they had a fan/supporting magazine by the same name) but when I came back to online activity many years after that someone had purloined the singular name, so I appended "2020" because I was also a fan of Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. To prevent confusion, I've used the name ever since, and even introduced it into my pen-name... Erm, no "2020" in that, though.

Kage

There are several Robs in my social circle, most of whom has prefixes so we know who we're talking about (Ginger Rob, Fat Rob, Lanky Rob, etc.). As the Goth guy who tells dead baby jokes, I got labled as 'Evil Rob' or sometimes 'Evil Scary Rob'. Evilscary stuck as a nickname, and I've used it on forums, deviantart and similar ever since. Even my fiancee has me in her phone as 'Evil Rob'!

When I was I middle school, I conceived and proceeded to write a very lame, but rather lengthy X-men fan fic about a character named Aethel (pronounced in my little mind as ah-thel), I didn't realize until a few years ago that this is also some accepted spelling of a Gaelic noble title. I devoted a good year to this little project, printing out page after page on dot-matrix printer. It was also around this time that I was introduced the budding internet. Small surprise I chose the subject of my pre-teen magnum opus as a handle.

But what really cemented the use of this handle was, I suppose, my rather random choice to use the name as a nickname during high school. Virtually no one from my middle school matriculated to the same high school, so I seized on the opportunity to call myself whatever I wanted. (Ah, the rashness of youth!)

I went back to using a grown up name once I got to college, but this has remained my internet moniker ever since. Every once in a while on very popular sites, the gaelic homonym rears its head and I will find the name taken, but usually it is available.

Many years ago there were a commercial in Finnish television, about candies (candys?). Called "Pelastakaa Pantterit" (meaning "Save the Panthers" and the "Panthers" was the name for that candy.)

Anyway, in that commercial there were a fat mexican man walking in the beach, wearing a black leather hood ( with a zipper in front of the mouth). He was just walking there and there was a voice telling ..something.

Long story short, that was so hilarious, I thought to steal that name. Erno "elPANTERA" Ristola. =)

And one presumes, Luddite, that your name refers to your self-avowed avoidance of all things technological? Well, nearly all things...

Kage

It's the name of my band from back when it was just me in it. It's also made an appearance as a rather nasty techno-virus in one of my old 40k rpg campaigns.

My name and my avatar are in honour of two games from which I draw inspiration for my Dark Heresy campaign. Paraih Press's under-the-radar gem Whispering Vault and Chaosium's much beloved Call of Cthulu. I had pondered using the name "Singularity" in respects to the movie "Event Horizon" (another source for game and atmosphere ideas).

Old-school 40k fluff.

Dr. Devam Outek. He was the lead/head scientist on the zygote project for the Emperor, which resulted in the creation of the space marines.

Back in 2001 I started playing IL-2 online (a flight sim, in case you're wondering) and since the learning curve was quite steep and I was a bit of a newbie I'd constantly wreck my own ride, crashing into fuel tanks, hangars and parked aircraft trying to land my **** bird. So naturally I choose 'Demolisher' as my callsign when flying online. It didn't take long for me to realise is sounded a bit too much like some kind of generic internet-toughguy-nick, so I shortened it to Demo, and it kind of stuck.

Kage2020 said:

Here was me thinking you were a Mortal Kombat fan or something (now I think it about it though it's Johnny Cage doh!).

Mine was a combination of wanting a cool handle for X-Box live I think and online forums. It's taken from verious ideas but prominent was wanting a Necrony sounding name (Nightmare Shroud) plus there was an X-Men episode during the Dark phoenix saga called "Dark Shroud".

I know however theres a couple peeps who use it including some goth from the US lol.

Kage2020 said:

Indeed.

Sing the praises of General Ludd!!

Don't tell me technology is neutral.

Every day I wander this city, and every day machines flash lights trying to tell me what to do.

Huge tarmac pathways cross my way, upon which gigantic, speeding metal machines move, machines capable of killing me if I cross their path and already slowly suffocating me with their toxic fumes which fill the air.

WHY SHOULD I TOLERATE THIS INSANITY?
NED LUDD WAS RIGHT!
The machine is the enemy.
SMASH IT WITHOUT MERCY!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_edoKp4IdUA

( Apologies for the band name ... )

I blame my brother for my name (blame, thank, whichever) When I was playing WOW, I had a character named Valulazin, one of my brothers had a warrior named cincinnatusk and then my other brother was Tekore. Well, ol' Tekore started out playing 40k and decided that his assault sergeants needed names on their shoulderpads. So he made Sergeant Valzin and Sergeant Cintus, and I just stole the name back. I also use Malanthropus quite a bit, made up right after my divorce when I didn't really like people very much and women were vile (not true, but at the time I was very very bitter) so it was misanthrope changed to malanthrope changed to a name malanthropus.

Val

I blame my brother for my name (blame, thank, whichever) When I was playing WOW, I had a character named Valulazin, one of my brothers had a warrior named cincinnatusk and then my other brother was Tekore. Well, ol' Tekore started out playing 40k and decided that his assault sergeants needed names on their shoulderpads. So he made Sergeant Valzin and Sergeant Cintus, and I just stole the name back. I also use Malanthropus quite a bit, made up right after my divorce when I didn't really like people very much and women were vile (not true, but at the time I was very very bitter) so it was misanthrope changed to malanthrope changed to a name malanthropus.

Val

The name ManBeast goes back to when I was a freshman in college. And since i am not drunk enough or my old roommate Nick around I'll forego that part of the story. Anyways, I started to work out with my roommate and hence earned that part of the name. In the 40k gaming group there are two IG players who own a trench coat, Uplifting Primers, and peak caps. I happen to be one of them. Also, I am in the National Guard and that is where the Colonel part comes from.

Actually I just like the sound of Castor. I pondered about a name that would fit for my Arbitrator and I came up with Gaius Castor Lazarus, for I see the 40 K Univerrse a bit influenced by roman and greek culture, thats how it happend.

As a great fan of the sci-fi/comedy show Red Dwarf, I claimed the title The Lord of Smeg during some circumstance I can't quite remember. On IRC this became LordSmeg, or SmegLord. Then, after some years absense this nick was taken, and in a fit of rage I realized I had embraced the dark side.

Thus Darth Smeg was born.

And he's stuck around ever since.

Amen brother Luddite! I was "accused" of being a Luddite once because someone found out I don't own a television.

Most people read head banger. It's head hanger . Hanger. Like a coat hanger.

Headhanger.

It comes from my old Orlock Necromunda gang; the leader of which was called "Headhanger" because he used to be a bounty hunter and had a habit of hanging the heads of defeated marks/bounties from his belt. People called him The Head Hanger. Shortened to Headhanger.

The best computer roleplaying game "Torment" (yay, oldschool D&D) had a dark, brooding and especially interesting character in it: Dak'kon, a githzerai Zerth. Those who have played the game and read a lot of its beatiful background text you will understand why he´s my hero...

When D&D 3.5 came out it wanted to play a githzerai multiclass warrior/wizard but not an exact copy, and invented a similar name to stay in culture, so it was Ik'kaan, some sort of 1st level Sherpa for a githzerai hunting team, later separated from his team and ultimately lost on the material plane.

Updated my journal!

I was about to give a short and sweet answer, but then I realized how long winded I am so you are getting the the full story. Many years back, when I was a wide-eyed youth, I used to hang about on BBS's ( Bulletin Board Systems - a prototype of internet forums, if you will). My computer sciences teacher in high-school, Mr. McMullin, was convinced that this was going to be the wave of the future. He encouraged me to get out there and telecommunicate with the world at large.

"Find an interest," he said, "something that you've not shared with anyone at school." The idea was that we were to find groups outside of the school that might share our own personal interests that were not likely to be shared in our own community. It was a small school in an even smaller town (My graduating class size was 35). There may have been only two of us in the entire school that could be considered sci-fi fans, and my tastes, at the time, ran more to fantasy than sci-fi.

Here I was in the late eighties, trying to find BBS users interested in fantasy, and more particular, dragons.

It took a while, but eventually I found a group who told stories through the BBS about their alter egos, all of whom were dragons. A whole world openeed up to me, but now I had a problem. To be part of this group I had to have an alter-ego of my own. I went home pondering how I was going to introduce myself to this group. I wondered what kind of dragon I might be (for those of you who may find this lame, remember I was 15 and one of two nerds in the entire school!)

I thought about a dragon's bat-like wings, and how legends about dragons go back to our earliest writings, next to myths about the gods. Then, in the dark, it came me; the dragon god of dreams, the night-black and glittering, Vespertilionysus.

It wasn't long before the exploits of Vespertilionysus were tearing up the BBS group. The next thing I knew, he was the backstory of everything I worked on creatively. I wrote an elaborate backstory how this dragon was part of royal blood lines and variations of the name would show up in all kinds of character I've played: Lionysus Tatzlewurm the Sorcerer, V. T. Grimm the gunslinger, Viscount Vespers of the house of night, Brother Vespers Vespasian, Black Templar Chaplain, Colonel-Commisar Vespers of the Imperal Guard, etc...

Eventually as I began running more games of my own, my friends joked that those evenings were 'Vespers.' I came to find out they were telling people that when they were goings out, they were going to Vespers. My "name" and the event, had become interchangeable.

I have become the office

I have become part of the night

I am all that dreams

I am the hope of new dawn

-Vespers

Nice...wouldn´t have thought that a simple question like that would reveal so much about fellow forumites ;-)