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] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

My initials are BJB.

I was in jazz band in high school. We were doing a joint thing with the choir, so everyone was running around moving stuff to make space. My parents had bought me a nice music bag with my initials on a plate on the front of it. Someone held up my music bag asking who owned it. I figured they just wanted to let the owner know where it was being moved to, so I spoke up... "Hah, your initials are BJ!"

Hence, my name became blowjob. The completionists called me Blowjob Betty (I'm male) to get that last initial in, too. At the time, I was quite quiet and took myself maybe a little too seriously. This ended that.

One day, I was at my buddy's place, and he called me "Beege," saying he didn't want to say "Bee and Jay," as it was too long. At that point, I said fuck it. My name is Beege. Let's go.

Over time, my friends added an article because why the fuck not.

Over 20 years later, and it's still my name. It actually taught me to not take myself so seriously. Although, one interviewer at a job had a really hard time keeping it together when HR told her my nickname without catching the meaning. She and I are good friends now.

In any case, I always get a slight chuckle inside when people hesitate slightly after introducing myself. I'm great at keeping a deadpan face about it now, too

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

Was supposed to be the thing the kid says in the “pork chop sandwiches” Gi Joe spoof, but everyone seems to think it’s a reference to Jeff Dunham

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I just wanted something short and reasonably pronounceable, as that's easier to remember.

In the past, I've used a FIPS-181 pronounceable password generator to generate pronounceable usernames that don't collide with existing usernames. But since the Threadiverse is still young, plus each new instance has its own username space, it's practical to have a very short username.

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

I can be a bit melodramatic and sassy, also like making music and looking good. Long-time fan miku fan too.

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

I'm a man that likes neon lights.

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

Stole it from a user on a pirate bbs I was a member of in the early 90s, Digital Underground

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

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

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

I once created a character in a story when I was a child about a Jack Green from the planet Æarth, and named an account on a popular site accordingly as a similarly young person, as I lacked nominative creativity, evidently. People kept getting confused between Æarth and Earth so I just changed it to Earth for future accounts.

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

it's better than what I had before

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

Resol - can mean a number of different things. It's the first 5 letters of the word "resolution". It's also the word "loser" spelled backwards. It's two notes on a keyboard (D and G in Anglo-Saxon music notation). And it just looks and sounds cool in my opinion.

van - the Dutch word meaning "of" or "from". Note that I am not referring to actual vans (the German equivalent being "von", which also appears in a lot of names). Also I prefer spelling that word completely in lowercase.

Lemmy - isn't it obvious? It's this wonderful website.

Put them together, and you get "Resol van Lemmy". It sounds pretty nice, don't you think? Especially since I really hate my real name.

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

Mine’s a music joke and a reference to a line from the song “Shiny” from Moana.

Though if my great grandfather was a god it was of strawberries which is nice. He’d grow plants and ship them to gardeners all over the east coast

[–] Stalinwolf 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I was playing some crappy F2P MMO (Perfect World, maybe?) and I made a warrior of some werewolf race. Just played with random wolf-related combinations and settled on this. Quit after two days and the username carried on for probably 15 years now.

I don't even really know all that much about Stalin. I just pulled it out of my ass.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Mine is related to my name but is not my name. I've been using it so long and in so many places that I decided I need a pronunciation and decided on "wudgerie," which is also not my name. Anyone who knows me IRL could figure out who I am without much trouble, and a dedicated investigator could probably dig it up (that's NOT a challenge, BTW 🤣) with a pretty high level of confidence without breaking a sweat, but (1) I allow for that in what I say online, and (2) I kind of like having an online persona that is mostly just the real me with a bit of anonymity. Keeps me grounded and reminds me that all you assholes are real people too (except you, @[email protected]... or you, Georgia Bulldog fans).

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

HEXN3T stands out and was only taken on PSN, apparently.

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

I used to see the F1 in the so called boring years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month 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] 3 points 1 month 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] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

My cousin, brother and I used to get high and play MTG quite a bit back in the day. There's a card called "Reef Pirates" that we used to joke around and call them Reefer Pirates. When I was making an account on Diablo 2 some time around then it's what popped into my head and stuck.

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

Username should be pretty self explanatory. If you still don't get it you can either ask me or bravely run away.

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

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

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

School nickname

In Portuguese "zero hora" is the midnight shift, people started making jokes when I slept in class and the name got stuck.

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

Just an old meme.

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

i like the swapnote girl so i borrowed her name

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

I think I picked it when registering with Sharky Forums back in like 2000, it just means a wage labor worker.

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

Tenno, wake up. It's time to put on the silly norg fish mask from cetus and make it look good.

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

It's a new one I made up when I joined Lemmy. Not sure how I exactly ended up with this but it's the only one I made in over a decade. I like nicknames that sound like actual names but are still unique, and I wanted something that sounds nice and gender-neutral.
Anyway, my nicknames usually become part of my identity. So I'm as much Thelsim as I am nowadays :)

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

I am terrible at names

The name i used before was "youtuber", which i "came up with" when creating my youtube account

This is the first name that wasnt already taken in Minecraft so i kept it

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

The way I drove and the papers I used for rolling joints back when I was a teenager

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

I had a job doing QA where I had to create user accounts. Some Guy was one of the three that I created every day.

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

Depending on what your lemmy app/ui shows, it's either a Guild Navigator or a Facedancer.

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

It means bare, naked, possession-less.

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

Calvin and Hobbes. I added a 'y' to the end because I could.

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

I liked Legos and I liked Pikachu at the time(I was 11 or so? Trying to make a Minecraft account lol)

I don't think I'll be able to use this name for anything commercial if I wanted to do that...

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

I couldn't think of a better one, and just shortened my full name.

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

The Reddit API debacle that killed third party apps.

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

It's from valarin (Tolkien's language of the Valar)

https://glaemscrafu.jrrvf.com/english/motsvalarins.html

Akasan is 'he says'

-z suffix is a person's name

So it's basically 'Teller' (I'd say storyteller) in valarin.

The 'h' was supposed to help in pronunciation, it only mildly does, I find

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

Wat Dabney is a minor character in Terry Gilliam's first non-Python movie, Jabberwocky.

The protagonist, Dennis (Michael Palin) goes to the city to make his fortune as a cooper. One of the first people he meets there is a legendary cooper named Wat Dabney ("the inventor of the inverted firkin") who's been reduced to begging because he's not a member of the guild that controls the trade.

I first adopted the name on IMDb, back in the late 90s, but retired it when IMDb shut down their general interest forums, and didn't use it on Reddit. I revived it for Lemmy.

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