How you chose your on-screen name (I know there is a thread like this, can't find it)

[GokuZool]

I am wondering how people chose there screen names becasue there are alot of very weird names on IW (like mine [img]tongue.gif[/img] ). I know there is a thread like this somewhere in the archives but I can't find it . Besides there are more people on IW now and more names. If someone can find the other thread, that would be kewl but in the meantime...I chose my name, "GokuZool" because Goku is a very kewl anime character and "Zool" is this ninja ant from this old game for the Amiga called "Zool". So don't flame me if there is a thread like this cause I'm not spamming [img]graemlins/spam3.gif[/img] .

[Neb]

Alright, so I read a book one day and saw the name Nebucadnezzar, thinking it would be a great name for a sorcerer or mage. Since I usually play either sorcerers or mages in RPG's I used the name a lot and it kinda stuck.

However, after using that name on a forum where I was constantly called Nebu or Neb or had the name misspelled, I thought that I'd make it easier on everyone here and just call myself Neb.

End of story [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Grojlach]

Alright, I'm copy/pasting an old story I've also used on several other boards, so if there are any references within you've never heard of, ignore them.

Okay, I will about the "history" of my two usernames, Marsplm (used at BGDungeon) and Grojlach.
When I was still very young - about 7, 8 years old, I did nothing rather than drawing, especially copying pictures from my favourite comic books. One of those characters was - surprise surprise - the Marsupilami. I used that character for some "comics" of my own, but in my subconscience I propably already foresaw troubles with the marketing rights of the Marsipulami, so I actually changed it by dropping a few of the vowels; voilà, Marsplm was born. Not that I used that name really often, though.
Anyway, when I got to secondary school, I decided to write some nonsense stories for the schoolpaper, and I needed a pseudonym, so I used Marsplm. For years, it went well, I wrote a lot of semi-quality articles and nonsense stories (to the dutchies: I also wrote dull Monty Python-like "Nijntje" stories , and emphasize dull), until I ended up in 4th grade. That's when I started a serie of articles I wasn't particularly proud of, looking at it now: a "competition", where the blunders of teachers were discussed and judged. But at the moment, it seemed very "cool", ah well, you know how distorted a mind of a bored 15-year old grammar-school student could be; besides, I even had the support of the schoolpaper editorship, including a few teachers, so I didn't think it could cause any trouble.
Anyway - it went totally wrong. I received a letter wherein one of the stupidities of one of the teachers was discussed. I discussed it in the article, and actually ended up defending the teacher in person in it, but even mentioning his mistake caused a lot of trouble; he ended up at home for three months, totally spanned. Even more, the School Board personally banned the entire "article" forever and the teachers in the schoolpaper editorship were actually put under pressure by them to name the real author of the article, but luckily for me they defended me - I used my pseudonym Marsplm, of course. But they did put me on half-pay for the rest of the year, to cool down a little.
A year later, there came a new schoolpaper editorship, with new teachers leading it, and they decided to completely scratch out every form of anonimity, but I found out about that a little too late - I had already handed in my article, signed by Marsplm, of course. And as a result, both my real name and my pseudonym were printed in the school paper. Ouch. I guess it served me right And besides, there was also a lot of censorship going on those days (probably also because of my "misstep" ), so there was also no humour in it, I was the only one who dared to put it in my articles, one of thirty pages... imagine. For a 16-year old, it was probably the most boring school paper we've ever seen in all those years. So a big part of our class decided to make a schoolpaper of our own, with lots of humour in it, more up to date news about the situation at school, etc. All anonymous, of course.
Since it was called The Underground, and since Marsplm was completely besmirched and exposed , I needed a new one, one that had a little "underground-like" atmosphere around it. And that's why I made up the name Grojlach. (btw my first choice was ol'Granny, since that was my Duke Nukem Multiplayer username, but it didn't seem to be the best choice ) Like most of all good initiatives, the Underground died after 5 or 6 issues, and I got back to the "official" school paper writing probably the best humor-oriented articles of my life (got a lot of positive responses, even from teachers), all without using pseudonymia. But anyway, Marsplm died, Grojlach still lived on. I've been using it ever since, for most of my activities. And when I first signed up to BGDungeon, I preferred Grojlach over Marsplm. Ah well, and to get to the (almost) commonly known part: some bored hacker at the University here in Eindhoven decided it was cool to hack into my hotmail account and used my username at BGDungeon to post some humiliating things about me, I made a mistake with changing e-mail adresses, and exit Grojlach, enter Marsplm. But that's not interesting any more, hardly anyone over here even knows what BGDungeon was or what it looked like.

But this is actually the true story about the circumstances around the birth of Grojlach. I still haven't figured out if it really means something useful, but to my knowledge, the answer is no. And having a unique username on the Internet could be useful, of course.

[Cerek the Barbaric]

My choice is much simpler (and boring, I'm afraid)

Cerek was the name of my PnP barbarian from the Unearthed Arcana (1st Edition).

He also ended up being my most powerful character, so that's why I chose him.

[LennonCook]

Well mine- Lennon Cook is infact my real name!! I used to have a different screen name... but I dont think imaloud to mention it here anymore, it was changed for censorship reasons.

[ 01-26-2002: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

[Djinn Raffo]

Djinn was what the tribes of the east began calling me because i granted three wishes for the people. Raffo is my name.

[J'aran]

J'aran is actually a rather simple anagram of my real name, Arjan. I just put the J up front and threw in an apostrophe for good looks. A couple of years ago I used this name a lot in CRPGs, but recently I've stopped modelling all of my characters after myself [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I have 3 commonly used ones, all based on old RP characters

Fortuna Freeman was my first ever char. HE became an Old One

He sponsored Lord Shield to Old-One-hood. LS did a lot of FF's work on Mystara, monitoring the Gods to make sure they behaved themselves

Jason Critchlow married Lord Shield's daughter

[Barry the Sprout]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lord Shield:
Fortuna Freeman was my first ever char.

---

So you are the lord of tentacled madness!! I had no idea, but I really should've guessed.

My name is the name of a charater from the Armeggedon Trilogy by Robert Rankin (Armeggedon the Musical, Armeggedon the B-movie, and Armeggedon the Remake.)

The character is a genetically engineered sentient brussel sprout from the planet Phnaargos. He is sent to earth to attempt to stop Armeggedon by rescuing Elvis Presley from premature death and acting through him to avert nucleur holocaust. He eventually decides to name himself, and decides on the name Barry. When Robert Rankin was asked how he got his ideas he replied "The ghost of my dead father visits me in my sleep.".

If you want to check him out try www.sproutlore.com. Try the biography on there, it really is rather odd...

[Jorath Calar]

Well I've had 2 names here... first was Row Firecam, which I choose out of sheer lack of imagination and fascination with Keldorn, thinking Row would be his younger brother who was still struggling for knighthood...
The second Jorath Calar began as a Bounty hunter in a Star Wars roleplay game, then became my second Baldur's Gate 2 character and ended up as a main characther in a fan fiction I am struggling to write.