What's In A Name?
You know, I was perfectly happy sitting in my house playing my Sega Genesis all by myself. The first time I ventured out into the world of online gaming was with my Dreamcast, since it was the first console that came with a built-in modem. (I was given a free modem for my GameCube, and it never even left the packaging) Of course, all I remember playing on it was Chu Chu Rocket (man, that was a fun game). I never joined Xbox LIVE until I upgraded my original Xbox with a 360, and even then, I didn't go Gold until Bomberman came out.
But the one thing you might notice if you've run into me online is that my internet identity is always the same. When I signed up for AOL back in the dial-up days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and broadband was a sci-fi fantasy, I found I had to come up with a nonsense word so I wouldn't have to put numbers after it. Wootini it was. Now, oddly enough, I've found over the years that sometimes Wootini is already taken, so I have to slap an "e" on the end of it. But every account I set up, whether it's Flickr, message boards, or my identity as a writer for this very website, I like my online identity to remain consistent.
Unfortunately, I've found that over the years, that's not the case with everyone. And with my early-onset elderly memory loss, I find it hard to keep track of gamertags, GayGamer forum nicknames (especially since people have recently started suffering from multiple personality disorders and changing them willy nilly) and actual real-life names. Not to mention E-mail addresses, AIM or other IM nicknames! Please don't take offense, but in the world of the interwebs, where you're not making a face-to-face connection, playing a quick round or two of Rock Band with someone often has me running back to this site to check the gamertag thread in the forums to connect it to the person I know from the message boards. Sometimes I wonder if other people have this same problem, or if I just have a really crappy memory.
I've always been curious how people come up with their online nicknames, and why they use different identities for different things. (I mean, aside from public identities versus private/naughty ones) It just seems to confuse things. To me, at least. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. (Now nobody's going to want to play with me anymore!) Is it just me?
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 28 March 2008
· Comments (18)
Other stuff like this: gamertags, nicknames, online gaming, screen names
Well, I picked mine by writing out my name in katakana (admitted Japanophile here), and I realized that an anagram of "Kurisu" (my name's Chris) was "Kusuri," the Japanese for medicine/hard drugs. I liked it, found it ironic, since I'm quite removed from any desire to do drugs, and so it's an online handle of mine. It's nice, it's almost never taken before I claim it.
Since reading The Neverending Story more than 13 years ago, I've used some form of Bastian. I started off as bastian in my IRC days. As more people got onto the Internet, it kept getting taken, so it morphed into Bastian227, which I've used for about 10 or so years. (The 227 is a number I keep running into, so I embraced it.)
The cool thing about keeping the same nickname is that anyone can search for it and connect the dots across the Internet.
The cooler thing is that I can disappear one day simply by changing it.
No, it's not only you. Back in the dial up days, I too came up with my online nickname - at the time, I was in high school and our english class allowed us to read a book of our choosing and write a report on it. I was reading The Stand by Stephen King because I enjoyed reading a few of his other books, and plus it was seriously long and I liked a good challenge. So, I, being a teenage boy, picked the bad guy from the book - Randall Flagg - and ever since have been rflagg. My license plate is rflagg, even, and fortunately it's rarely taken. Once in a great while, I'll meet someone who immediately gets the reference, which is bizarre.
My book report on The Stand was as epic as the novel itself - it weighed in at 27 pages. I'm pretty sure my english teacher never read it, but I did get an A on it. :)
-m.
i agree that having one name to rule them all is the way to go. i, however, am a victim of the latter group that is prone to having multiple ones. my original screen name was tariun - short explanation, i was part of a writing forum way back in 98 online, in the story i "played" two characters, one was Lawrence and the other Tariun - which was just a play on Saggitarius. My first email address became tariun@hotmail.com - which i still have today, and i pretty much used tariun for everything else. when the dreamcast came out with online capabilities, I created a website of fandom devoted to the system and tags for JGR that i had created. the host on the site was named Dr. E. (short for Eugene) Mon. the reason to that name was that it can be read as "dream on" but no one ever caught onto that. M0taku/Motaku are the result of Xbox Live, and also my intro to gaygamer.net. i wanted an amalgam of words representing being gay, and being a bit nerdy. Motaku was the perfect fit. the reason for the two different versions, oddly enough Motaku is already taken by someone live who registered it and i guess forgot about it. So i had to replace the "o" with a zero, which i actually like much more. at some point i'll probably convert my email over as well, but i'm not trying to traumatize my live account anymore than i have to.
I've been Shin Gallon ever since I got my ICQ account back in 1997, and it's the name I use everywhere. It's funny, I made it up on the spot, thinking of Shin Gouki from Street Fighter and Gallon the werewolf from Darkstalkers, and it's the name I've used everywhere online since.
I'll have to alter forms because some sites won't allow spaces or underscores, but I'm always Shin Gallon online, and to my knowledge I'm the only person that uses that name.
I don't get it either. I want the same one on everything that requires a username. I think numbers on names are trashy and a cop out way of being original (personal opinion- no offense intended). my chosen name (in life and online) sounds cool to me so that's what I use. 'Hermy' alone is almost never taken and my first and last name together is a one-in-a-million (one-in-a-world?).
I've had the same username for 9 years since before Diablo 2 came out. It was really random. I wanted to have a fantasy-sounding name that to me sounded a little dark. I put in the five hard to use Scrabble letters in a bag (J,K,Q,X,Z) pulled out 2, then I put in 2 of each vowel and pulled out 3, followed by 2 of each of the common letters (S,T,R,N,L) and took out 2, mix and match until i got someonthing good (first try actually) and voila, Zanxial was born.
It so random and weird that it is almost never taken. Only once did i have to change it.
I've had this one since I started using GameTZ in 2003, and have used it (mostly) in other sites I sign up for. If I use another screen name, it's something with my name in it, like Leekachu, Leeatard, Leelander, etc.
I used to have a voice like Tails (Miles "tails" Prower for the rest of you that actually hate Sonic's friends), and he was always my favourite Sonic character, so it just kinda stuck...
Now even though we've outgrown all that jazz, quite a few people still call me Miles.
I try to stay consistent too, so iMiles for XBL seeing as some damn idiot took his birthright. Grr.
I chose Bouncybhall when joining a forum, but the reason behind the choice is something I often forget, and as such it has become a myth, that I explain in a different way every time.
My nickname at college was 'Boo' but that is hardly original enough. The best part of being 'Bouncybhall' is friends can shorten it to 'Bouncy' and strangers struggle with pronouncing the 'h' in the middle.
It's a silent 'h', but people still make an effort to use it...
"Hi there Boun-see-bee-hall"
I prefer names that are unique to ones that are simply a declaration of a passing trend "Footiefan2k" for example.
While I tend towards using my real name or a derivative (Ry-guy, specifically), I've used the handle artemis13 for EVERYTHING since the internet adopted me back in 2000 (And it's always been all lower case, don't know why..). I was a total mo and was in LOVE with the anime Sailor Moon, and having a thing for cats, Artemis was the natural choice. While I may be outgrowing my whole thing with anime, I still use artemis13, just because it's how ANYONE I interacted with in the past 8 years knew me.
But sometimes, artemis13 has been taken, so I have my alt ID that I picked up the first time I encountered the issue of "Name already taken", which is WKD4496. Kudos to anyone who knows what that is!
Mine was six random letters I typed in for my first email account (yahoo.com baby!). It is unique enough where it is never taken. However when I installed Battlefield 2 I found it taken by some bastard four years ago who never continued to play the game. Needless to say I was so mortified I uninstalled the game and never played it sense!
Honestly? I always wanted to be Sydney Bristow on Alias, and have a cool call sign that my allies could whisper or shout into their walkies, situation depending. And for some unfathomable reason, I've always wanted that supra-governmental callsign to be Tiny Dancer. And for an even less fathomable reason, I decided having that name as a nom-de-plume on a gay video game news site would be as close as I would ever get.
I was right. So far.
What I didn't think of - and this should be a word of wisdom to the rest of you - what I didn't anticipate was that said gay video game news site would be as successful as it has been, and that I might actually have to live and work under the callsign Tiny Dancer for the foreseeable future. And now Elton John and Tony Danza are a part of me. Think about that.
It could have been worse. I could have gone with my second choice, MonkeyNutz4Evr.
Your name always reminds me of the Elton John song, Tiny...
well.. as for mine... I'm half french and i don't mind the name "Frenchie", but it's just that... well... as i was looking for a name, i was hungry... hungry for french fries... french fries... french guy... get it? no?
I slammed my face into the keyboard and it coincidentally put my state, first name, and year of birth in it.
I'm another one of the using the same name or twists of it when already taken and can be dated back to AOL 2.5
There's actually a really good reason for my name, that has nothing to do with my height, weight or...ummmm...anything else physical about me. (!!) But I can't tell everyone, or I'd have to kill them. There are a few people who know. And I do try to use it consistently across the intarwebz whenever possible. I couldn't agree more that the consistency really helps keep track of who is who when you're IMing them, emailing them, or seeing them on PSN.