Hey Tess...

[Nev]

Will it hurt your feelings if I admit I changed my avatar to confront some of your issues around gender roles?

Next time don't pick a girl's name for your handle though.

[Tessian]

Haha I never said anything about the GENDER of your previous avatar persay... just that her attitude and everything about her didn't match you

Tess is a unisex name... but more often girl. That's why my name isn't just Tess

My name is a mix of my bad memory and a Shadowrun book. Back many many years ago... musta been 2000 or earlier, I needed to pick a name for Asheron's Call because my friends told me I couldn't be called Knuckles in a fantasy MMO So I picked Tessian Zhan-- Tessian being what I thought was the name of a dragon from a Shadowrun book I had recently read, and Zhan was from Timothy Zahn, an author I loved. Later found out the dragon's name was Tessien... but too late. It's stuck ever since, especially because it's unique enough I rarely have trouble registering it anywhere. Only maybe once or so every few years does anyone bring up or even think it's a girl's name so I've never worried about it.

Aren't you glad you asked?

[SineSwiper]

That's alright. I used to have a nick called "Obe-Wan"

[Tessian]

That's alright. I used to have a nick called "Obe-Wan"

So then where did the current name come from?

[Flip]

Lets make this the official where did you get your nick thread!

Flip comes from long ago for me, too. Back when i played D&D in middle school i made a thief character with the name Flip Fantastic. I liked him so much i started to use the full name for all my Internet handles... i think even on this board. Through the many nukes, accidental erases, and IP moves i shortened it to Flip. I used to get the 'Are you filipino' question all the time, but no... I'm white with 75% German heritage.

Lately, though, i've been using LewisCBR for new forums and various usernames. My last name plus a shoutout to my motorcycle, a Honda CBR F4 600. My real life nickname is Sweet Lew, a reference from Sweet Lou Gehrig and Sweet Lou Piniella since i played baseball is high school and still love the sport.

[Zeus]

I was an arrogant kid and settled with Zeus. When I got older (university years) I had been using it for about 5 or 6 years at that point, since my BBS days (look up BBSs in Wikipedia, kids :-), and it became like a second name to me. So it stuck.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Andrew is my name!

For a while I used to just use my own name with some random stuff added to the end of it when I registered at forums. (ones that I recall include the current Killer Bee, KGB Ninja, Dirigible Gato, and Doughboy).

I've used Anitelu and zenbot as nicks elsewhere but generally prefer to use my own name.

Real-life nicknames I've worn (and can remember!) include: Fuzz, AT, Big T, T, Alphabet, Writing Implement, Tau, Andy, and BFG.

[bovine]

I worked at a summer camp where you had to have a "nature name". I couldn't decide on one so I whipped out the ol' dictionary and obviously didn't get very far. My other internet handle is Fazuzzu. Interestingly enough it is sort of like Tessian's story. It's from a Futurama episode where they get younger and younger and the professor has a gargoyle named Pazuzzu, but I mistook his name for Fazuzzu... and no one else in the universe uses it so it's great for MMO names.

[Eric]

Blackage had a very simple meaning, we live in a Black Age lol.

Changed to Eric, don't even remember why.

[Nev]

My nick history would be as:

Originally Anders - because I wanted to use my name but didn't want the full version. I thought I made it up, but my gray matter must have pulled it from Norway somewhere or something, since eventually people would always ask if I was Scandinavian.

I changed it to Mental somewhere in the middle of the Aqua Demesne, I think, because people had always told me my mind was good (and my body wasn't). Ironically enough! Then I got bipolar - which still sucks, no matter what idiots like kali (sorry for the random flame, but I still think you're generally a stupid hyena when the subject comes up, and I'm gonna say something about it) like to say, so Mental wasn't good anymore.

So I took "Nev" from "Nevyn" in Katharine Kerr's Deverry cycle, from a "dweomermaster" (a mage) who commits a sin of passion that leads to his lover's suicide and his eventually living 400 years to wait for her to be born again. It's a story of pride - he's not called Nevyn at first, but takes the name "no one" (nev yn) to remind him to counteract his foolish pride.

I thought it would help with my own foolish pride, but since I'm still giving people like kali crap about their knee-jerk ideologies around my illness, obviously I haven't learned a thing. Sorry, but you guys did ask, and my name history does tie into all that at this point.

[SineSwiper]

SineSwiper. I needed a new nick to join the "31337" BBSs. This was something I purely picked out of thin air. I didn't even realize how good a DJ name it makes until recently. I've halfway considered trademarking it.

[Nev]

"DJ Sineswiper"?

Can you actually cut, spin, or otherwise provide a consistent stream of music to a party?

[Blotus]

Stolen from Bushido Blade 1. Not the M:tG card or a car. Don't remember why I switched to BL from Goo.

[Lox]

I got the name Lox partially because of arcade games and partially because of WaveRace 64. I used to hang out in the arcade a lot when I was 14 (Marvel Super Heroes, Soul Edge, etc) and, of course, arcade games only let you use 3 letters for your high score. I was playing a lot of WaveRace back then too and it was the same way. I had a friend who's last name was "Bosley-Smith" and his nickname was "Boz" and he always used that for his 3 letters. I thought it sounded cool and liked it more than just using my initials. So I took my first initial and added the "ox" to make "Lox". When I first found this place back in 1997 or so I needed a name and I had been using "Lox" so I just picked it. It's easy to write and usually no one seems to have it.

I later found out that lox is a kind of salmon or something. It also stands for Liquid Oxygen which is cool. haha

I actually use the name "Fatmumuhomer" now everywhere besides here (like the CAD forums and such). It's my AIM name and email also. I changed my AIM name so that an ex-gf couldn't bother me on AIM. haha I, of course, took it from The Simpsons. The episode in particular is titled "King Size Homer" where Homer gains weight so he can work from home on disability. He wears a muuumuu as well (I didn't know the correct spelling when I chose the name!).

[Shellie]

"DJ Sineswiper"?

Can you actually cut, spin, or otherwise provide a consistent stream of music to a party?

He did do our music lineup for our wedding..does that count? lol

[kali o.]

Kali is a goddess name - it just also happened to be the PC password of a co-worker I was screwing at the time (I'd pass a few hours at work messing with her email for kicks). For whatever reason, I decided Kali was too short (maybe it was too few characters for the Sega-Saturn boards?). My user name ended up being Kali'Osiris'*something*. It was ridiculously long, G-man and others trashed me for it.

When I came here, I shortened it to Kali O.

[Oracle]

I used to play Legend of the Red Dragon on a BBS here in town. SImply picked this name out of thin air. Think there was an oracle or something in a fantasy book I was reading at the time.

Then the name evolved into several derivatives, such as Oraclese (MMORPG name) and Oraclops (another MMORPG name where I sold the account with a character named Oraclese on it, so I needed another variant).

Then I got silly and started naming all my characters with the prefix ora...

Oraboom (a caster)
Oracleze (wee Im original)
Orapokeyougood (an archer)
Oradescriptor (I got tired of thinking of good suffixes).

Oh, these are all in Dark Age of Camelot by the way (Oraclese made it to WoW and FFXI), the game I've been playing for.... holy shit, 6 years in November.

[Shellie]

When I started the Asheron's Call beta, I needed a character name. Before that, I used DemonincAngel in Quake and Underlight. I asked my friend what I should call my character, and she said she has always liked the name Seraphina. Well, it's stuck for the past 10 years. Seraphina, and any version of Sera (Seralynn, Serafina, etc) has been my character/user name in almost any application.

[Kupek]

FF6, opening scene when the Moogles help Locke and Terra. Kupek is one of 'em.

[Zeus]

FF6, opening scene when the Moogles help Locke and Terra. Kupek is one of 'em.

Somehow that's not a surprise :-)

[Tessian]

FF6, opening scene when the Moogles help Locke and Terra. Kupek is one of 'em.

Somehow that's not a surprise :-)

Was his avatar a clue for you?

[Nev]

"DJ Sineswiper"?

Can you actually cut, spin, or otherwise provide a consistent stream of music to a party?

He did do our music lineup for our wedding..does that count? lol

It actually does. It's not quite being a DJ, but it is close...DJ, to me, would be someone who can both pick the playlist, and provide some minor spins/effects/other processing in realtime to work the crowd a bit. But it's the right direction...

[Zeus]

FF6, opening scene when the Moogles help Locke and Terra. Kupek is one of 'em.

Somehow that's not a surprise :-)

Was his avatar a clue for you?

Sort of.....coulda been my many play throughs of the game as well

[RentCavalier]

My name is a character from my novel, and actually the longest sort of character concept I've ever had.

The Novel is the Black Report #3: Windy City Blues (On Amazon.com today)
but the character is much older than that. I was like, five or six and whatnot--'round when I was gonna go see Jurassic Park--and I constantly thought Grant's name was "Rent" (because I first played some crappy Jurrassic Park SNES game, complete with FPS exploration in dungeons and overhead explorations around the park. The voice overs were hard to understand, so I heard "Rent" instead of "Grant" and I thought it was the coolest name ever. Plus, I dug the hat.)

When I found out his name was Grant, I decided that I'd invent a "Rent" and he'd be WAY cooler. The name Cavalier was originally meant to be a joke, but it sounded really good together, and since I originally designed him to be a mercenary, the name Rent Cavalier is a sort of play on words--to hire a mercenary, you're effectively renting a cavalier.

Hence, Rent Cavalier.

Now, though, he's grown into a more spiritual/symbolic character, less grounded and more omnipotant in the frame of the book. He's effectively my preferred self in literary form.