What is the origin of your SO username? [closed]

Question

What is the origin of the name you use on Stack Overflow or if you use your Real Name on Stack Overflow, what's the origin of any online handle you use?

Most Popular Reasons

• Uncontrollable Circumstances (birth)

(Adding reasons as they come in...)

Answer 1

Many years ago, in the dark days before mobile phones, I was involved in a BBS meet where everyone swapped home phone numbers online before University broke up for the holidays. We were mostly new to this kind of thing, and didn't think to swap real names as well.

Cue following awkward phone conversation with someone's mother:

Me:   "Hello... can I speak to... *[suddenly realises the problem]* 
       er...  CaptainNemo, please?"

Her:  "What? Who is this?"

Me:   "Um... sorry. Ok, this is weird.... but do you by any chance
       have a son or daughter who's studying computers at university 
       and is home for the holiday?"

Her:   "Oh... you mean Paul. Hang on. Who shall I say is calling?"

Me:    "Great, thanks. Tell him it's... ah... JabbaTheHutt."

I started making a point of using my real name for stuff shortly after that.

Answer 2

Stack Overflow doesn't have a handle on Jon Skeet. Jon Skeet has a handle on Stack Overflow.

Oh wait, wrong post.

Answer 3

My Mom

Answer 4

I'm a Kiwi and I'm a Bastard

Answer 5

P, because it's my first initial (my given name is "Pimp").

Daddy, because that's what my wife and kids (^{_{and your mom}}) call me.

Edit:

Seriously? Down-votes? WTF?

Answer 6

Ken Ray - I guess since that is what my parents thought would be a good name for their first-born, who am I to argue?

Answer 7

My name comes from Magic: The Gathering where 'bolt bait' refers to a really annoying creature that desperately needs to be hit by a Lightning Bolt. That's me.

Answer 8

I'm nobody special

edit: to give context, before I became a moderator, I went by the username "nobody_" (before that "nobody", but I switched to "nobody_" when "nobody" was taken on Twitter)

Answer 9

$ whoami
ether
$ perl -wle'print substr((getpwent)[6], 0, 5)'
Ether

I've always used this userid, but I started going by this name in real life at a former company where I discovered on my first day that not only was there another developer who shared my first name, her desk was right next to mine. Everyone insisted that I needed to resolve the namespace collision; thankfully I was able to self-select my new identifier.

Answer 10

litb meant "Linux Is The Best" back then. Nowadays, it means "Let It Be".

Answer 11

Seiti comes from a romanized corrupted version to portuguese (I´m brazilian) of my japanese name:

清一 

In fact, my 'real' name is Sei-iti.

It is a two parts name. The first half, 'sei', comes from the fact that every male member of my family (father, uncle, grandfather) has that initial on their own names. The other half, Iti/ichi, it´s because I´m the first born son.

Answer 12

I go with first name [dot] last name, in lowercase. Of course there are places that don't allow me to do that, so if I can't use the dot, I will normally skip it.

I figure my parents went to all the trouble of making me, so I might as well use what I was given.

Answer 13

Mine's got a history. :)

It all started back in 1997 when I changed schools (I was in 7th grade) and the new school had Internet (which was pretty rare at that time). The schools computer labs however were not really the latest-greatest things. Out of three rooms only one had Pentium-166 computers with Windows 95. The second best room had 486 CPUs with DOS running on them; and the last one had antique 286 CPUs that booted from the network (no hard drives in those computers!) and, naturally, also ran DOS.

Now, since most of the stuff was on DOS, there was also support for internet on DOS. "odipkt" it was called, I think. Using that, there was one great thing - IRC client. Now, since some computers didn't have hard drives, the program was stored on a network folder. To run it, you would have to copy it to your home folder and edit the configuration file. In the config file you had to change two things - the IP address (I usually picked a random one, not knowing how things work) and nickname.

The default nickname was "laacz" - which is a deliberately misspelled "bear" in my language. Since I didn't know what to choose, I took "Vilx" - which is similarly misspelled "Wolf" in my language. It also has the bonus of having the same first letter as my real name.

After that I stuck to this for a long time, since I was too lazy to figure out another one. I used it wherever nicknames were needed - games, internet forums, etc.

Eventually I met a colleague of my father's in the IRC. From him I learned the trick of adding "-" to the end of your nickname when it was already taken somewhere. And for me this was often the case, because it turned out that the idea of "Vilx" was not very original after all. ;)

A turning point came when my favorite internet forum grew large enough and migrated form a homebrew system to phpBB thus requiring everyone to re-register. I didn't do it immediately, and after a few days "Vilx" was already taken. Since then I've always used "Vilx-" everywhere, and so far it seems that this now IS original. Haven't met anyone else with the same nick. :)

Answer 14

I have my username because I'm a big pussy... which is why I work at Initech to begin with.

But at least my name isn't Michael Bolton.

Answer 15

"Gortok" is an amalgamation of my name, "GeORge sTOcKer" (emphasis added).

Answer 16

I blame my serious lack conservation of originality.

Thanks Sean!

Answer 17

My name's origin is obscure.

Back in the early 1990s, there was a television show called The Critic. The main character's mother was a blueblood socialite who suggested that all the poor people in New York City be blasted out into space.

After that, I started using "out into space" as a sort of meme among my friends. Various things should be blasted out into space. Like the service at Bennigan's. Or leaf blowers on Saturday mornings.

Several years later Out.Into.Space became my performance identity when I was in the slam scene in Dallas, Texas.

Now I'm old and fat and impatient and the only performance I care about is my code's, but Out Into Space has always stuck with me. Fourteen years and counting, old friend. QQ

Answer 18

Random typing, actually I was trying to type Sloughk (still doesn't make sense).

Answer 19

My name is Tony - nickname sometimes is "T" - Cousin randomly shouted to me (while slightly drunk) "Tea with two sugars?" - Sounded good and is now my new user name of most things.

Answer 20

On Stack Overflow I use my name Jim C. On other sites I use Gray Raven which is the name of a DD character I played back in college which was more years ago then I care to think about.

Answer 21

"AgentConundrum" comes from the main character on the TV show "Seven Days," Frank Parker.

Parker is an NSA Agent whose code name is "Conundrum."

It was one of my favorite shows back when it was still on the air, mainly because I love time travel.

Answer 22

The history of my choice is no where near as interesting as some posted here, just a bit goofy..

Way back when I use to like a show called Otherworld which is just plain terrible, but it played in the 80s when I was way less selective about the quality of stuff I watch ( maybe ). It only lasted 8 episodes, and rightly so. One of the episodes entitled "Village of the Motorpigs", just sort of stuck in my mind for some reason, the way freaky stuff stays with you from your childhood like that Space 1999 episode called Dragon's Domain that still seems to freak me out 30 years later, see for yourself. Anyway the episode goes like this:

"The episode opens with the Sterling's traveling through the Forbidden Zone on board a rackety old bus owned by Velcrows Widley - a retired Zone Trooper. After being stopped by Zone Troopers, the bus is searched and the Sterling's are discovered, but before they can be taken away the bus is attacked by Motorpigs - a motorcycle gang. After being taken to their camp, the Motorpig's leader, Chalktrauma, decides to split up the family. Hal is sent to work in a chalk mine - chalk being a mineral that has a narcotic effect. The only one of the Motorpigs who doesn't take chalk is Chalktrauma who has decided he likes the look of Gina and starts making his plans. After talking with Pango - one of the other miners, Hal challenges Chalktrauma and, after killing him, the family make their escape through the mine when the Zone Troopers attack the camp." - taken from www.paulmichaelglaser.org

I guess the name is just a touchstone to a fun childhood memory that makes me smile every time I see it, and I can use that every now and then... :)

Answer 23

A few years ago some friends of mine introduced me to NetHack, which I somehow never managed to come across by myself even though a) I'm a bit of a gaming nut and b) the game has been around in some form or another for nearly 20 years. Since I was a NetHack noobie, and the first character class I gravitated to was a gnome, I named my character "Gnovice" (with a silent g). I kinda liked it, so I started using it for my various login IDs.

Answer 24

It's Track #2 from The Cult's Electric, and partly my last name. It was given to me at the tender age of 13 or so (7th grade), when me and a friend (who introduced me to the band, among others) and I were beating Legend of Zelda. A second friend heard it, and was born with the amazing talent to dictate people's nicknames, usually for life. He liked it when he heard it and started calling me that, and pretty soon everybody was doing the same.

Answer 25

It's the same handle as I've used ever since I hung out as sysop on the #Delphi group on EFNET IRC in the early-to-mid 90's, and originally it's the name of a Scottish Munro (mountain over 3000' ft) that I'd climbed around at that time. Makes it about 15 or 16 years old.

I wonder if anyone can better that by a substantial margin?

Answer 26

It is a shortening of the registered name of a horse I used to own, Holly's Little Gem.

Answer 27

First initial followed by last name. I use this everywhere on the web.

Answer 28

Usually I use b2gills, some people in high school used to call me bgills. I would have used that everywhere, but it seems someone else used that on some sites. The number 2 comes from the fact that both my, and my mothers, initials are the same.

Answer 29

Mine started as a misspelling (Simgnud instead of Sigmund) and then "Gnud" became sort of a joke with some non-virtual friends of mine. So now I use it online =)

Answer 30

I'm terrible about thinking up names, handles, etc. So, at one point long ago when trying to think of a character handle for an old shooter my impatient friend said, "C'mon man, hurry up and think of something"

...and Sumptin was born.