Why did you choose your username?

[Barbarossa]

Following on from the avatar threads, it might be interesting to find out why people chose their usernames.

Mine came from the "Prelude to Dune" novels, by Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson.


We know Chewie chose his because he is excessively hairy :earl:

I'm pretty sure MagicNakor got his from Raymond E. Feist's "Riftwar" saga.


Does a person's username affect your perception of them?

[Mr. Mulder]

Because I am in actual fact the real David Duchovny

[JPaul]

It's short for Jean Paul.

Long story short - A mate of mine worked in a bank. A client came in to re-arrange his loan payments from £1 a week to 50p. At the same time he gave the bank official notification that he was changing his name from something like Bob Smith to Jean Paul Lafayette. I loved the juxtaposition.

I just shortened it to JPaul coz I thought it looked cooler.

[Cheese]

Withcheese/Cheese: My nickname in real life is Cheese. I added the 'With' bit because of a joke with my earl friends about an old coat that I had that made me look like Withnail. I changed it back to Cheese because it's quicker to type.

Mike Nelson: I like MST3k

Jordan (aka Katie Price): I recall a load of people took on the usernames of "celebrities" and pretended to be them ages ago.

Fake Shemp: Evil Dead reference.

MCHeshpants420: Sealab 2021 reference.

googlebot: I pretended to be a Google bot for a while, not sure what that was all about.

The King of Nigeria: I pretended to be the King of Nigeria for a while, not sure what that was all about.

Neocheese: It's what my name would be if I didn't think that the Matrix sucked.

[Tempestv]

I already said it in the aviator thread, but the Tempest V is one of my favorite aircraft. I chose it when I was trying to create a yahoo address and think of something different that was not already taken. I ended up with Tempest_v2005 (my HS graduation year). For a lanparty gaming name I shortened it to TempestV, then I started using it for all my user names.

[Barbarossa]

googlebot: I pretended to be a Google bot for a while, not sure what that was all about.

after all this time, I never knew that was you.

[Cheese]

googlebot: I pretended to be a Google bot for a while, not sure what that was all about.

after all this time, I never knew that was you.

Here's an actual email googlebot received from, funnily enough, neotheone:

hey now goggle tell me honestly without that gay 3rd person talk who r u cause i knoe the ceo of google and what ur doin id copywrigt infrigmnt ur stealin googles name for ur own purpose

so if u tell me who u really r ill cut u sum slack

[JPaul]

after all this time, I never knew that was you.

Here's an actual email googlebot received from, funnily enough, neotheone:

hey now goggle tell me honestly without that gay 3rd person talk who r u cause i knoe the ceo of google and what ur doin id copywrigt infrigmnt ur stealin googles name for ur own purpose

so if u tell me who u really r ill cut u sum slack

Did you tell him.

[Guillaume]

I chose mine cause it's my forename.


Or just to further the whole "pretending to be french" thing, who knows?

[JPaul]

I should probably tell you the others as well - as per cheese.

Mr JP Fugley - Pretty obvious really, both Fugley and I used the account. There's another person with access to it. So strictly speaking he / she was on moderation but still posting using another account. Obviously I cant name names for fear of consequences. I made the avatar myself to represent both sides of the human psyche.

Agrajag - A reference to Douglas Adams. Arthur Dent kills another being in each of his re-incarnations. His final incarnation is Agrajag. The avatar is Hal from Malcolm In The Middle.