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Oh shit, story time again. I'm going with the short version because I have some ideas in my head I need to set into my current project, but still.

So, the user name southsamurai used to be southern samurai. But that's too long for a lot of games and forums, so it got shortened.

But southern samurai goes back to the early naughties. I have been into martial arts in one form or another since my early twenties. And, as it so happens, most of what I trained in was Japanese in origin, at least in the forms I learned. This included sword stuff. Mostly casual, really, I never was some kind of master. Barely good enough to teach noobs, and only noobs.

Anyway, by the time the century turned, I was as good as I'll ever get. I was also working a lot. 60 plus hours a week, and kinda more since one of my patients needed care overnight. But it was semi off books, and it was essentially some pocket money for sleeping there instead of at home, and being there if he needed something.

So, of an evening, I would exercise. I had put on some weight over the years after I stopped lifting, and hadn't adjusted my diet and exercise well. The biggest I've ever been.

So, when I was out in the side yard, where my patient could call to me, I'd do various stuff.

The neighbor decided it was entertaining to yell out sumo from across the road. I dunno, I guess a fat dude doing rolls and falls means sumo to him. Dude was bigger around than me anyway, and I shrugged it off.

But, one evening, I'm doing sword stuff. Cutting tatami in specific. It's fun as hell once your get the basic techniques down, btw. Very meditative, but fun.

He decides to come over and watch. Eventually he gets my attention and cracks a joke about sumo again. I kinda rolled my eyes internally and pulled an "actually" card out in the hope it would bore him and he'd bugger off. Described the difference between sumo and what I was doing, and that most of the stuff I did was to samurai than sumo.

He cracked and said I had to be the fattest samurai in the south. Which tickled me a little since he was fatter, and I still could have picked him up and thrown him. My patient weighed about the same as this guy, and I carried him. So it was funny instead of insulting.

I laughed at him, cut the tatami closest to him and packed up for the night.

After I told the longer version of the story to some friends, it turned into a bit of a nickname. Mostly online, but irl too. And it stuck.

Sadly, I'm not the only one using the exact user name, though I think I'm the only one on lemmy. There's also another half dozen using variants of it.