this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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This has probably been asked before but I wanted to add another layer/an alternative.

So, I ask, where did your username/pseudonym/nickname originate from? What's the meaning behind it?

Or alternatively, which is the most creative/interesting nickname origin you have come across?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 minutes ago

A few years after high school I joined the stage crew for a musical theatre group some friends started. At a performance after party, I was looking after some of the younger cast who had a few too many: one of them decided I was like Bosley to their Charlie's angels; the other felt I was looking after them in a fatherly way - so they combined it, and that became their nickname for me. Also, the nickname my siblings had given me, NoPatchGlandBoySleepyTheIronDeficientBrother was just too long.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 39 minutes ago

I love the phrase “your average Joe”, but it doesn’t translate very well, or I couldn’t think of a translation quickly enough (English isn’t my first language), so when I was talking with my friends one day, I translated it as “your average mortal”, and I liked it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 40 minutes ago

Engineers left it on my PRs before waiting several months to merge them :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

It's a reference to a Simpsons episode, where Bart writes "nobody likes a sunburn slapper" on the blackboard in the opening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

My name's Darren. Here I am in the 'net.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

My name is Helen. I hated that there were no good nicknames for it (ugh, Helly...) but I love my name. Mentioned this to a friend who was like "you could use other parts of the name for a nickname..." and suggested Lenny. As a woman on the internet, having a gender ambiguous username is very beneficial, so I adopted it, and I absolutely love it. I added extra ns because then it'd look like bad kerning Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Sometimes I get kinda pedantic.

When i joined the fediverse I decided to make a break from my old usernames.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Remember that mobile game that was popular a while ago, Neko Atsume? It's that, but with Etna from Disgaea, because at the time I first made this username (years ago) Neko Atsume was taken and I was playing through Disgaea D2.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Less common anglicisation of Samyaza, first amongst the nephilim; a group of Angels that fell by marrying human women and teaching them knowledge.

Yes I am clearly a bit pretentious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

My display name is a short-version of my nickname which is a phonetic amalgamation of my first and last name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Someone else took karl first and I want to know which one of you it was

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

You really want to see this thing everybody talks about?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

As a bookish child, I made weekly trips to the library. To get to the kids section I had to pass the large print shelf, and there was one book that was always there: The Spitting Image. The gargoyle on the cover scared me! But when I finally looked him straight in the eye I found that he was trying to look furious, but came across as a little goofy. That's the way I imagine myself, too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

HUM - The Scientists

Keep this benzine ring around your finger, and think of me when everything you wanted starts to end

The song is one of my favorites. About a couple scientists, probably in a relationship, testing drugs

With HUM, you never can really tell what they are talking about but it's always pretty poetry and awesome music. With a good imagination.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Just needed a name and combined a word with an animal

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Display Name is because the Earth part of a Universe Simulator program run on a windows 11 machine and the Earth.exe process crashed, which is why we have assassination attempts, felon president, CEO getting shot, random coup attempt in South Korea. The Simulation program just spews random plotlines without the Earth.exe process to fine-tune it. Its basically telling AI to draw human hands, it keeps making no sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Its a me, mario

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Ambian, maybe? I don't especially like disco, and my name isn't Doug. But I felt it in my heart at some point that isn't exactly clear to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Found a Kraken in Ultima Online. Thought it was rad and didn't know how to spell it as an 11 year old.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Star Wars Galaxies I was on a red wine kick at the time and had found Ecco Domani to be a good low priced red. I meeded a character name for SWG so I looked up "to seize" in Italian to make "seize tomorrow".

It's actually "squeeze tomorrow" or "tighten tomorrow" and should have been "cogliere il domani" which is cooler. But c'est la vie, or questa è la vita.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

I believe it's self explanatory.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

From a famous Australian poem called... "Said Hanrahan"

https://www.australianculture.org/said-hanrahan-john-obrien/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

I made this account shortly after watching Jackass 4. One of the new guys brings his dad on, this guy served time and did not look like he was one to fuck with. They put his head in a fishbowl with a tarantula and he instantly went into full bitch mode. That man's name was Dark Shark.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Surname plus 3 random numbers

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

It popped into my head while I was thinking of one, felt kind of clowny, then I searched for it online and didn't find any results. I was shocked that, apparently, nobody else is using this, so I've decided to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Hank likes hominy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

My nickname was originally "Stoy On" but over time it got shortend to "Stoy".

"Stoy On" comes from a small Swedish comedy film by "Galenskaparna och After Shave", a fantastic group of theatre actors who has had a very long and successfull carreer of comedy theatre, television and film. They specialized in musicals, with plenty of amazing wordplay and some fantastic songs.

Anyway, the film I am talking about this time is the TV film "The Castle Tour", the summary of it is that a group of Swedish tourists are going on a tour of a castle in Sweden, the guide has them confused with an English tour, and the joke is that the guide just speaks a nonsense language.

Now, one of the nonsense pharses the guide used was "Stoy on!", which is meant to mean "Se upp!" in Swedish, and that experssion has two meanings in Sweden, the normal one "Look out!", and the litteral one "Look up!"

At the same time I was getting annoyed at not having a standard nickname online and when gaming.

And since I thought it was fun to have a nickname that meant "Look out!" in some ways, and I liked the sound of it, I adopted "Stoy On" as my standard nickname, and since it got shortend I mainly go by "Stoy" online, or, if it is taken, "Stoy On".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

This is a question I was asked all my life, so already in 2004 I wrote a blog post about it: https://paradies.jeena.net/weblog/2004/oct/jeena-paradies but it's in German so I'm posting the translation here:

It was sometime in the year 2000 when I had already been DJing at small parties for a while, playing house, drum’n’bass, big beats, and electro. When people asked who the DJ was, everyone just said, "That’s Richard." Naturally, that didn’t sound very cool for an alternative DJ. Then my cousin, who was also a DJ but played the more mainstream style of techno, chose the name DJ Alec-tron, which put some pressure on me. Since we often DJed together, and I didn’t want to go down in history as "DJ Richard," I needed a proper DJ name.

So I started looking for a suitable artist name for myself as a disc jockey. One day, we took the train to the Love Parade in Berlin. We stocked up on canned beer the day before and opened the first can as early as 3:00 AM (in the middle of the night). The fun and drinking continued merrily. I occasionally glanced out the window, hoping to find inspiration from some distant land (aka eastern Germany).

And then it appeared—like the Holy Grail once revealed itself to King Arthur and his knights—from out of nowhere: the station sign "Jena Paradies." I instantly knew that this would be my new artist name. It was as if the hand of God had guided me along the tracks to Jena Paradies station and bestowed this name upon me.

Jena Paradies train station

A month after the Love Parade, I had my first gig as DJ Jena Paradies. There’s even photographic evidence from that time:

People at a party, a DJ spinning vinyl records

But over time, I didn’t want to be named after a station in eastern Germany anymore, so I started thinking of a new, better version of the name. I realized that if I added an "e," the name would be pronounced like Gina Wild’s first name. That sounded much cooler to me, so it became my stage name to this day.

Pronunciation: First name pronounced like Gina Wild’s first name roughly "Djeena" and last name pronounced like the German word "Paradies" paradise

I now use it almost everywhere related to me as an "artist"—very often online, with my band, and for photography, which I want to do more of in the future.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

You could have at least answered OPs question! ~/s~

Love the evolution!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

It’s like 15 years old from back when I used to PVP in EVE online. Vaguely weird to pronounce and towards the middle of the alphabet so I don’t get primaried

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Redditors are stupid in very specific ways and it annoys me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Because I like these little guys: Grasshopper Mouse

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago

The Old Man waiting for you at the end of time in Chrono Trigger is Gaspar, the Guru of Time. (At least in the US - in Japan he was called Hash)

I thought it was fitting since I ever so briefly ran my own instance (endofti.me) when I first jumped ship from Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

A bunch of goofy bureaucracy name fuckups to my real name. It’s a long and boring story. It’s in no way related to being a group for tacos addicts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Same, diceware generated

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Minecraft username I coined at the age of 8. The name speaks for itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

What is the JG at the end?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

my initials

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

"Behold, a token effort" sick line dropped by best boy linhardt in fire emblem warriors three hopes

My display name is probably from the most mysterious song on the internet

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

https://youtu.be/FhykvrPZwA4

The pinnacle of Australian culture

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I mashed the keyboard.

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