Your Weird Name at Wyrd

[Duende]

(This is merely to satisfy my boundless curiosity...)

How did you come up with your username here? I know some are obvious, like EricJ (real name) and Frustrated Father (self-explanatory), so maybe you guys can explain why you chose your real name over some pseudonym.

I may as well begin:

Duende - I chose it because it was a song on the album Karma by Delerium. It was a very pretty sounding song sung by Camille Hernderson (Sarah McLachlan's backup singer) but the lyrics themselves were very dark (read here). I thought it was symbolic for me since I sometimes have problems with depression so it seemed to go along with how sometimes I wear my 'happy face' to cover the blacker feelings underneath.

Also I chose it because of the meaning: "often considered to be Spanish equivalent of the English word, "sprite" or the Japanese word "yokai" and is used as an umbrella term for any fairy-like being such as goblins, pixies and elves."( - from Wikipedia), and that it was kind of gender-neutral, that people wouldn't be able to tell from my username alone if I was male or female.

Well, that's my story. What's yours?

Edited March 11, 2009 by Duende
misspelling

[thetang22]

Mine is pretty much an inside joke from college. I was "sort of" dating a girl for a little bit and a mutual friend called us "Pootie-Tang" .....lol. Needless to say I got Tang, she got Pootie.

I was making a new instant messenger name at the time - "Tang" and "The Tang" was already taken, so I popped on 22 at the end because that was my age at the time, and it rolled off the tongue fluidly.

[Ritual]

Mine comes from way back when I used to DJ at goth clubs. You had to have a cool sounding DJ name! I really didn't like to have one, as most "cool" names are also more or less "corny". I stumbled upon a record by a rather dodgy UK goth band called Ritual that most people here never heard of, and then I thought... hey, that sounds rather cool, and is not THAT corny. And if someone DOES say it's corny I can always refer to the rather corny band and put all the blame on them. Years later, when I found the Internet painting community I had to decide whether to use my own name or come up with a corny nick name. That's when Ritual came to mind again. I like it, because it's the same word in a lot of European languages. It's short, and it's easy to remember.

Here's the record, by the way:

It's an ok, record, but nothing special...

[supervike]

little know fact that my username is actually an anagram!

s ometimes

u nusual

p eople

e at

r ice

v inegar

i n

k yoto

e eeek!

It was from my experiences as a Fisherman-lumberjack in the far east. It was such a mouthful for my crewmates to use, it got shortened, to supervike. For some reason, they never could just call me Jim.

[r2-j1]

I'm a complete an total Star wars nerd. Mine is my initials, RRJ, turned into an Star Wars astromech droid designation.

[Malebolgia]

My name is also quite obvious. I loved the Spawn comic around my 20th, but calling yourself "Spawn" is quite pointless as the name is taken everywhere. Then I remembered the devil from Spawn's comic, Malebolgia. I loved the name and used it ever since.

I could also have used "Baardapigeul", which is something me and a childhood buddy came up with when we played Civilisation I for the first time...but I don't have a clue WHY we came up with the name and how to explain it in any language (yeah, even in Dutch it's dodgy ).

[Illustrange]

ik haal er baardaap uit, en misschien zelfs een verbastering van baardapenheul... op zn zuidelijks uitgesproken dan

in english, yeah.. the name makes no sense in dutch either

illustrange was a name picked out of the air, when I started doing freelance art I was technically still under the *6 months not working for competing markets* kind of contract (tough I didnt benefit from the counterside of that, as you are also are supposed to get financial compensation during that time.) and even tough I dont think board/miniature games compete with mobile videogames a lawyer could bend things like that in no time.

nevertheless as I was dropped like a brick financially and no other competences on my CV apart from gamedesigner I had to find work to pay the bills and gave a swing at wich was at that time even less than a hobby : illustration and concept art.

illustrart sounded strange and thus it became illustrange / illustranger.

tough since then I moved my artbusiness under my own name, the name stayed my forumnickname.

[Peterdita]

Well mine is pretty obvious and totally unoriginal. I gave up minis and hadn't played with anything or painted in 5-6+ years. Then I saw Perdita on CMON and found Wyrd. I loved that model so damn much I had to buy it. Then I decided to join the forum. I never used any forums or really knew how they worked. If I had known how involved I'd get, I may have spent more than 30 seconds coming up with a name. It's a little femine, but I'm not to worried about that kinda thing.

@ r2-j1 : Ever listen to RJD2? Great DJ/Producer that went the same way you did with a name.

[Illustrange]

by the way jim,

we all know supervike is your vigilante alias.. no need to look for alibis

[goblyn13]

Mine was more i got tired of a name i had used and found it had run into a few other using the same name, so i had always been a fan of Brian Froud's work since the Dark Crystal. that and I felt that goblins always got the shaft in every gaming system. So I felt it was necessary to support them. The 13 was because everybody picks the "lucky number" so i figured i would run counter culture.

[Thryth]

My handle comes from the family name of a number of AD&D characters that I played many years ago. Old English suffix for strength or something. It made sense for the types of characters that I played.

[Brushmistress]

Lots of great stories about everyone's names!

Mine came from needing a new handle on eBay to sell my painted miniatures (used to be sisterjanet - named for a Tori Amos song). I had just come back from an event called "Burning Man" when I picked the name. A link about it if you're curious. http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/

I was part of a group called "The Lamp Lighters", who literally lit lamps for the "city" everynight - about 400 Deitz Oil lamps to be precise. One day I had the dubious honor of bring the "Robe Mistress", where I handed out the robes & sashes we wore when we lit lamps (and occasionally used a large cat'o'nine tails whip to scare people into turning their robes in when we were done).

The job was so fun, I just carried the "mistress" part over to my painting name, and became "Brushmistress".

[redstripe]

I was involved in some charity work in Jamaica when I was a very young man. We were putting up an outbuilding for a church when one of the locals I was working with asked if I was thirsty. We took off, walked down this narrow dirt road until we came to this tiny shack with a piece of corrugated steel hanging over the front.

The guy I was with had this cane and he knocked on the sheet metal with it and wouldn't you know it, the sheet metal lifted up and there was a guy back there with a whole canteen. I remember that there was a big rusty sign for "Red Stripe" beer in there and being a very young man with mischievous thoughts, I decided to order a beer.

The time I spent in Jamaica had a big effect on me and I've sort of associated Red Stripe beer to that time in my life, and Red Stripe beer has come to represent, for me, all the good things I see in myself. I've used it as an internet handle practically all my life, even in those early days of usenet and IRC.

A red stripe is really easy to paint on regimental banners and squad insignias, too.

[St. Anger]

I am a Metallica fan... But I am sure most already got the reference...

[lauth81]

Lauth is my last name (as you might have guessed already) and 81 is the jersey number I had throughout my 15 years of playing american football.

When I looked for a forumname/nick back in the days when the internet was still young, I looked up from my computer, saw one of my old jerseys on the wall with my last name and the 81 on the back, and so was my nick born. It's in use on almost all the websites I need nicks for (except ebay and some others for security reasons)

[waghorn41]

waghorn41?

well waghorn is my paternal biological name as my father was adopted

the 41 refers to 1941 when his two older brothers, both RAF fighter pilots, were killed in action

So waghorn41 is a kind of tribute

[maple]

Maple:

I was 9 years old and walked out of the house one night only to find my older brother kissing a girl... with an open mouth. As any 9 year old (at least back in the early 1980s) would do, I started to point, tease and laugh.

My brother grabbed a gardening rake (one of those heavy pointy ones) and started to chase me, intent on hurting me... bad.

I was running for my dear life and turned, for a mere moment, to look back and ran smack into a maple tree. The next thing I know, my mother is slapping my face to wake me up. I had managed to knock myself silly and broke my nose.

Starting the next morning, my family started to call me "Maple Mat", which over the next few weeks was shortened to "Maple". It has stuck with me, for 23 more years... It has also been the basis for a tattoo or more on my body.

-maple aka mat

[Chameleon]

Wow, there are some great stories.

I chose my name partly because I liked the idea of creatures that could mimic colours and patterns, just as we sometimes strive to do when painting our miniatures. The other part is a nod towards my partner. When I signed up to Wyrd we had just come back from a holiday in Malta during which we visited a nature reserve. As we walked around we saw a sign saying that chameleons had been sighted in the reserve and he made me a bet that he would spot one during our walk. Obviously, I took on this bet thinking that it was a sure thing that he would never spot a chameleon, that being the point and all. But an hour later there we were watching a tiny chameleon walking along a branch and right before our eyes it was changing colour. It was also very cute with little swivelly eyes! It was the highlight of our trip and now whenever I think about how amazing nature is I aways spare a second to remember the chameleon.

[Moavoamoatu]

Mine is a bit silly. The first time I logged in Wyrd forum I didn't expect to stay. It' was just to browse it and buy miniatures. So I used the name I was using in FPS video games such as Counter Strike.

In such games I used to shoot at everything which was moving.

Moavoamoatu is "Moi Vois Moi Tue" in french which means litterally Me See Me Kill like in Ork language may be

I kept it for games and for Wyrd forum as I can't change my name now but I am not a killer at all.

If you browse french forums or my blog, my name is YIU. Yiu is one of my favorite french comics. This character is a female asian assassin who works for clerical institutions in the far future.....but I am not going to kill anyone don't worry (except Bexley in IP may be).

Here is the homepage of Yiu : http://www.yiu.net/

[TheBugKing]

TheBugKing came out of the first online handle I had which was NidBoy. I obviously played Tyranids at the time. Well, once I turned into a legal adult I figured that "Boy" was no longer really appropriate. TheBugKing is also really appropriate as my uncle was curator of arachnids for the Smithsonian and is now an entimologist. He has focused on spiders his entire career and has discovered many new species. That being said, as I ws growing up I almost always had a tarantula as a pet.

I've been into bugs for ages. I ended up keeping TheBugKing and have had this handle now for over 13 years. It just fits now.

[GreyHorde]

Great stories!

My handle is fairly obvious, but has a couple of references in it. Greyhawk was my preferred FRPG campaign setting. For years I accumulated and cast lead & pewter miniatures, so there was a lot of gray (grey) metal around. Horde - as in rampaging horde - reads better than hoard - as in treasure pile. I mean, a bunch of unpainted miniatures is sort of a grey treasure pile, but that wasn't the image I wanted to project. It also serves to remind me that I should be painting to reduce the backlog instead of posting on forums.

So, it's an homage and homonym, metaphor and motivator. Say that three times, fast. : I started using it on Reaper forums, intending to come up with a better one sometime later, but it seems to have stuck. Now I use it for anything related to miniatures, except eBay.

[thetang22]

TheBugKing is also really appropriate as my uncle was curator of arachnids for the Smithsonian and is now an entimologist. He has focused on spiders his entire career and has discovered many new species.

Has he seen your Ramos project yet?

[demonherald]

simpke and straightforward ... When I ws a Gw manager I had to create a team leader user name during a summer online campaign as we were Demonic legions (not dAemonic ) a it is now I was the Demon Herald ... stuck was easy to remember and was about the time I started forums...

incidently I have a ridiculusly strange Ebay account name ...... demonslairpaintedminis .. purely came about as when I was first creating it I didn't realise I could put spaces in the name using under score.. Doh

[v22TTC]

It's verse 22 Tao Te Ching - about the most profound and 'true' 'deep truth' I've ever come across (spent my whole life looking). You need a good translation though! Kind of following the same logic as the main reason I've never had a tattoo - If life is about personal evolution, then what can I find that has a chance of representing me forever? I'd have had no name if that could have worked somehow but v22TTC seemed about the most likely to be able to stand the test of time.

I did actually live that 'truth' for a while (after a hard life of being very, very dark) but with everything that's happened since (again) it feels more like a sick joke now - I'm given to bleak, ironic humour but that's too much even for me!

At the moment I'd prefer to cease having that username and probably refer to something a bit more Nietszchean (far more relevant to these dark times) but maybe one day life will stop booting me in the balls for five minutes [i suspect I'll have to get out of this country for that to have a chance of happening] and I'll be able to wear that name again, and explore and embody it - rather than feel like I've monstrously taken the piss out of myself while pelting myself with rotten tomatoes!

But it remains an aspirational thing and I've kept it for use on other forums to make life easier. For the record, the diminutive 'v22' is fine.

Edited March 12, 2009 by v22TTC

[Wren]

I've never been the kind of person to attract names, and naming things is always a bit stressful for me. I had used another handle online for ages associated with a different hobby. When I got into miniatures I settled on Wren for reasons of nostalgia and because I couldn't think of anything better.