Screen Names: Where did you get that name?

I know somewhere in the dim past we have had a similar thread but it seems like we have welcomed many a new name and I think it could be fun to know why you chose the name you chose for your posts on LT. Where did it come from? What does it mean? Do you use it elsewhere?

Tell all, only if you want to, as I am curious.

Oh, maggie1944 is my mother's nickname and the year I was born. Rather dull.

I'm sure you will have many interesting explanations in this thread, so I will start with the dullest and then every other post will raise the standard.

pgmcc - my initials.

I also use it on LiveJournal.

Great Idea.. StchNTyme has been with me since the pay 2.35 per hour AOL days, did I just Date myself?? Oh well :-) I am a Stitcher of all things string, I knit, sew, crochet, cross stitch and tat.. and I love to cook.. this name was shorten from Stitch In Time a chapter from a Sci Fi book I read years ago.. cant remember which one. and my love for crafts transformed into the name. I use it all over the web.. If you see it more than likely its me. Can you copy write a Handle?

First I was cmtdrt, but that was before Talk even existed. I changed it to fleela after Talk was introduced - it was a name we called our cat Leela after we got her and found she had a few fleas.

Now I'm just me, with my middle and last initial added.

Dayna, I confess I miss the fleela days. I was quite used to it, but I am adjusting.

I'm still fleela over on Twitter if you ever venture over that way!

majkia was the name I chose back in the days when few folks used their real names on the internet. I love it as I can be majkia everywhere.

It is from an ancient Egyptian scholarly book, and was an old translation of the Ancient Egyptian word for Emerald. I'm a May baby so it fit.

Later, our local area was renamed the Emerald Coast, which I thought was nice of the locals to name it after me. :)

Oh, clamairy is what Clare Mary sounded like to me as a toddler. (I'm from New York, keep in mind.) So that's how I pronounced my name as a wee thang, and my siblings still call me clam or clammy.

Morphidae is a gorgeous iridescent blue butterfly. I like the idea of transformation. I use it here and the nickname I was given here in GD, Morphy, on my blog.

It's a book cataloging site so I think mine's fairly self explanatory...

So many people had already used my real name that I fell back on one of my favourite quotes: "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality" by Jules de Gautier. Not much to it really :)

I wanted to be BookDiva, but it was taken. When I was younger, I aspired to own a book store that I would name the Merry Mary.

Mine is pretty obvious. In reality, I didn't think I'll like this website so much. I thought it'll be only of those times where I register, check what it is, and then deactivate. So I used the first username I could think of, which I haven't used before. Looking at my username, it seems kind of...awkward.

The Wolfy part of my nick is a diminutive of the nick I used for my direct connect hubs when I first started using that. I picked the name Wölf_Brother (the umlaut on the o is because there were a lot of Wolf nicks already and I wanted something a little different) because I'd just started reading the Wheel of Time books and it pre-dates the Michelle Paver book of the same name. As Wolfy was already taken when I changed my name I added the AHS tag for the dc hub that I ran.

Mine is pretty boring - I love birds and the saker falcon is one of my favourites. Sadly they are endangered, except in Hungary where they are the national bird and thus protected.

Mine from a combination of a lovely Christian Riese Lassen piece of aquatic art:

http://www.aejv.com/las-p40.htm

And my love of dolphins, and space rock :-)

>15 Sakerfalcon:-6 I've always loved both of your usernames.

Mine is the name R. Buckminster Fuller gave to a specific type of geodesic dome he created (also called the Fly's Eye Dome).

I am monohex on several sites.

Salt-Man Z is a Transformers toy exclusive to South America. I picked the name for use on a Transformers message board a decade ago; I was trying to think of an uncommon TF-centric name that would stick out (I had been going by TheGuruNow) and SMZ's box was sitting on my desk right next to me.

I use it pretty much everywhere. If you Google saltmanz or Salt-Man Z and the result isn't a toy, then it's me.

I wanted a name that people who knew me could remember easily including me. It's my first name plus my favorite knitting method and I use it all over, gmail, my blog, my small business, Raverly. I think the gmail was first. Mostly I try to use it for anything knitting/fibre related.

It's not exactly an alternative personality, like Don Diego and Zorro, it's certainly not Pseudonym I can hide behind to express opinions I am not willing to own.

I wanted to change my during a job search and because of some concern about web-stalking. I decided to use the scientific name for book worm, but it was pretty unattractive, so I ended up with the genus name for a book louse (bark louse).

For a while, it seemed like a pretty unique handle, but someone else appears to be using it on livejournal. Oh, well, I still like it.

Got my PhD in high energy neutron detection, hence drneutron. Plus, it makes me sounds like an evil mastermind villain.

I just go with Pollysmith because I know I'll never forget it!

Siobhon, pronounced shavon, is an Irish name meaning Joan or Joanne. Why I use it....I am an Irishophile (did I just make up a word?) and I like the way it looks and sounds.
I do use it at other sites. I also use Danu the name of an Celtic goddess on another site.

>22 drneutron: It does doesn't it. In fact, it reminds be of all the supervillians in history. The first that comes to mind is Doctor Octopus.

# 22 - Plus the fact that you live in a refurbished volcano. Nice digs.

Every username I've ever been given has been some variation of my name and I'm pretty sure I'll remember it. Besides, if I ever write a book, you'll know it's me. And if any of the thousands of people I've known over the years is on LT, maybe they'll recognize the name and say so.

well at the time of joining I really didn't know what LT was, so I just picked something from the book I was reading at the time. I was reading Tris's book by Tamora Pierce, so trisweather is short for Tris weatherwitch. I don't use any other place. I used to use the name piptris alot of different places, so not so many anymore. piptris is from two of my favourit redheads. Pippi Longstocking and Tris

Busifer is my late cat. It's a word play on "bus" which means "prank" and Lucifer.

Every room of my house contains books, so I figured what the heck . . .

Okay, the bathrooms have magazines and periodicals, and there are no books in the garage or closets or attic. And technically, the laundry room only has books in it on a temporary basis. That's where the freezer is and all previously-owned books spend at least a week there to prevent the possibility of an insect infestation. So, there's ~almost~ always books in the laundry room.

I refuse to change my name on a technicality.

I don't "do" other sites.

I had two nicknames in the past, Lady Catherine and 'Gata', which is simply Spanish for cat. I've considered changing it since people started to ask me if it was a takeoff on a certain performer's name, but I've had it much longer, so I'll stand by it...for now.

Joybee is a nick name my sisters gave me when I was a baby, it easy to remember and always makes me smile.

tardis is the name I use on as many sites as possible, although there have been some (like Flickr) where someone else already got it. I've used it for quite a long time, ever since I first signed up for BookCrossing.

I picked it because a) I am a Doctor Who fan and b) the concept of a TARDIS which travels in time and space and is bigger on the inside than the outside seems to me to be the perfect description of a book.

tardis: I love the last part of your explanation!!

MrsLee = first name and title. 1) I'll never forget it. 2) It is what the 3 & 4 year olds I taught in church for about five years called me. I like it. :)

My middle name is Dawn, and I'm from Georgia. I use GeorgiaDawn on Flickr. Someone already had it on Twitter (how dare they!!!), so I added the tacky "1" on the end of it.

I have 5 cats and I teach third grade. I used a z because catsteach was already spoken for on Yahoo. :)

Tardis, I love your username and the last part of your explanation!! So true!

DragonFreak, love your username too! I've always loved the idea of dragons and wished I had one. :)

When I first joined I was robinsage. Its the code name for the Hell week at the end of US army rangers (IIRC) training. I was big into military history as a teen/preteen, so I used it all over. Might still be a couple sites with a robinsage around, and its probably me. DeusExLibrus is a perversion of the phrase deus ex machina.

Joel Perry B.

A combination of my first name and my last name changed a bit. It fit because I used to read a whole heckuva lot of fantasy. I use it when I can but there are some sites where someone else has gotten to it first. Then I'm sannedragon, (Sanne is how I spell my nickname, because San just looks too abrupt) or sandragon72. But I don't venture too far from LT.

It's currently my real name, because when I signed up, I wasn't thinking of chat. I've been considering changing it, so I don't have as much of a privacy worry.

Its just my first name (well a shortened version, I'm actually Sean-Maree), I obviously wasnt feeling very creative when I first signed up, lol :)

I'm PurpleSeanie on a couple of sites where I couldnt get just Seanie (ebay & rewardscentral)...

Mine dates back to the run-up to the release of the LotR movies when B&N gave courses online about the books; there were dozens of name generators which would provide Tolkienesque names-& you could choose a Hobbit name, a dwarvish name or an elvish name. Mine is elvish & sounds very close to my real first name which is Bonnie. I & several of the other people that took those courses still have a website called Tolkien's Ring where we discuss our favorite books which has been going for 10 years now. 8^)

I'm mad about fairies, so wanted something to reflect that, i've used it for about 6 years now, on lots of sights, if already taken then I add 2005 to the end.

>37 catzteach: Thanks! Sometimes my feelings is that I replace "had" with "was", but...

>40 sandragon: I always thought that's how you got your username.

>43 Vanye: That story is very neat!

Mine is from an email handle I had a long time ago which was "Lbaker1" I decided to spell it out el baker one.

I've had people ask if it's pronounced elba-ker-own or elbak-er-o-nee (to rhyme with macaroni) and that always cracks me up because I think of the movie That Thing You Do with the band that called themselves "The Oneders" (like Wonders but with the number One) and everyone called them The Oh-Nee-Ders! Always makes me smile.

It's been shortened to "el" or "elba" which is fine with me and other places on the web I'm usually just "lisa :)" since that's my blogger handle.

Mine is from an old high school computer password. The lettered part, and the easiest to remember. It changed every year, so I was sad to see that go. I liked the sound of the second part, so I kept Rozax (ROW-zax) for later usage.

Since I've been using Rozax everywhere, I've been very careful with my online behavior. There's no real excuse to be a troll, so I've come to the conclusion to stay away from online communities when I'm in a bad mood. Otherwise I say stupid things, and then pray my family doesn't see it. :(

Boringly, my initials plus my birth year. Easy to remember. I use it a lot of places, but in a couple I use cjquincy, my prospective pseudonym as there are two other writers with my real name, and in a few places I use LittleDoe, my nickname as a baby as I was born during hunting season.

Mine is obviously courtesy of John Donne. It's been my online name since my college days, when I fell in love with his wit. :o)

Well... as I write under the name R.T. Kaelin.... yeah, pretty self-explanatory, I suppose. :)

Klaruśu is a nickname my husband and another Polish friend use for me in the real world - comes from Klara (the nearest Polish has for Claire) and sort of means 'Little Claire' (in a weird, incorrect way as the first person to use it was a strange child at a mountain hostel that looked like the hotel from The Shining ... but that's a tale for another day). The 'ś' is pronounced 'sh', by the way. Now I'm klarusu everywhere because I started out on LT and spread around elsewhere from that ... now I can't be bothered to change it all over so klarusu I am (even though I put about 20 secs thought into the choosing of it, eager as I was to catalogue my wares!).

I keep meaning to change my moniker. Like lots of people I wasn't intending to stay on LT - I was just checking it out (two years ago!).

I am always at a loss for a screen-name (no imagination). I had just come back from an amazing ski-ing trip in Canada and had been poring over Canadian maps with a map-geek friend. We found Athabasca County and that led me to an old Alistair MacLean book. So, a bit stream-of-consciousness, but that's how I arrived at Athabasca. (And it's been confusing people ever since!) Some day I may get round to changing it...

ETA: trying to fix touchstones

Don't change it, Athabasca, it's a good name and a good story.

When you see Choreocrat suddenly appear, it's me.

Are you really changing your screen name, Will?

Do you have a new agent who advised you to change your screen name, Will?

whoa, that's gonna be weird

I figured it's a good idea to have a screen name that isn't my real one. It'll be slightly less googleable, and I won't be quite as paranoid. Sure, it's all on the eternal record with my real name already, but it's not as obvious.

Where did it come from? You all (well most) know that I've done a lot of historical dancing, and we used a fictional nationality to avoid placing ourselves anywhere in Europe specifically - it stops nationalism and the like raising its head. One of the things about this fictional micronationality, we decided, was that political disputes were resolved through dance. Dance as a form of government = choreocracy, thus Choreocrat.

Will, I like the new name! Historical dancing sounds really cool. I signed up under my real name when I first joined LT, but then realized I didn't like that idea. My Catzteach is much safer. :)

Oh! I read Choreocrat as Chore - o - crat. Like Bureaucracy, it would be a Choreocracy

OK, now I'll say it like Choreography - dancing, dancing, dancing... not doing chores. Spelling is such a challenge for such as me.

Oh, look! I've changed!

I'd never thought of choreocrat like that, Maggie! Here I've been making people think of me as someone who likes to make people scrub the floor. *blush*

>62 Choreocrat: Oh. I need to make mental notes now. Pretty cool concept for a screename I'll have to say.

*sigh* Name changes affect my brain like a little flea biting it every time I see them. Ah well, so long as you remain the same lovable, warm and funny fella you are, I will deal with it. :) Thank you for warning us!

Yes, I'm still reeling from Fleela's name change.

And I had exactly the same interpretation of Choreocrat as Maggie did! I figured it had something to do with the paperwork aspects of your job, or something like that. The real explanation is waaaay better!

I've been lurking about this group since signing up for LT a week or so ago, and I guess this topic is a good place to make my introduction.

My screen name is connected to my book blog. The blog is Only Orangery (for the simple reason that my favorite colour is orange) and by connection I am Her Royal Orangeness (which sounds like either a wicked witch or a darling princess...take your pick).

Welcome, Your Orange Majesty! Welcome both to LT and to the Green Dragon. We're a friendly bunch . . . pull up a bar stool, have some cheese and a beverage, relax.

>66 Her_Royal_Orangeness: Welcome and may I say, I love that screen name.

Mine came from the graphic novels Strangers in Paradise. I always thought of Alaska as a kind of paradise (to me, at least) and I liked the novels. At first I was Stranger-in-Paradise, but that got unwieldy, so I shortened it to Arctic Stranger.

(Actually I live in the sub-arctic, but I figure it is not worth quibbling over 66 miles.)

>69 Arctic-Stranger: For some strange reason, everything I see your username, all I can picture is a white arctic fox. Strange, huh?

#66 Welcome! Love the screen name!

#70/69 DragonFreak, that's so weird because I always think of an arctic fox too!! So either we're both strange, or it's not so strange after all. :)

>67 ejj1955: I shall have some brie and a Chardonnay, please.

Thanks for the warm welcomes, all. Love your screen names...and the stories...also.

Mine comes from part of my real name, and that I live in a northern community (although not far enough north to be arctic). I originally wanted to use northstar, but someone (with one book, entered in 2006) had already used it :(

#72 - Hmph. *puts away the cheddar and tequila sunrise* Thought HRO liked orange. Hmph. ;)

>74 MrsLee:: I'll have some, please! I never turn away Cheddar (or tequila sunrise)!

millhold is is the first 7 letters of my 10 letter last name, and the first letter of my first name. Not at all brilliant, but I do remember it, and use it everywhere I need a screen name, or an alias. I've been using it for over 13 years, as it came from a naming convention used when I was in NYC.

I love hearing the stories behind people's 'online names'.

My name is Caitlin but rarely shortened it, occasionally a friend would call me Cait. Then when I was in 5th Year, my friend started calling me Caiti, which, for some reason, prompted my English teacher to call me 'Caitak'. I assumed that would be spelled with an 'ak' at the end. It just sort of stuck.

Now I use it for everything online. Before that I used 'Smudge' which was a nickname I'd earned after dressing as a cat for a fancy dress thing and I've also used 'PureRose' which is taken from the meaning of my first name and the meaning of my middle name.

Coming from a government background, I was also leery of using any version of my real name. I chose my screen name almost from utility. For the past 10+ years, with few exceptions, I have lived close enough to work to be able to walk there. Love it. Highly recommend it whenever possible.

My mother was French so when we had a sailboat we originally thought to call it Mademoiselle. Fine, except no one could spell it and you have to pay by the letter to have it painted so we went phonetically to Mamzel.

>79 mamzel: - Love!

I'm not a deranged fan or anything, though I have liked some of his work (not Stardust or the Fokker crap). I assume (and hope) that he doesn't use the internet. I do spell it "deniro" and not like the name "De Niro" on purpose. People often want to correct me on that.

I don't remember why I chose the screen name. I think because I used it on another site, then used it here thinking I wouldn't be here long. That was five years ago. The only connection I see is that he looks a great deal like my great uncle and would fit into my family rather well. He has a sparkle in his eye just like my grandfather had when he smiled.

Keep thinking I ought to change it, but meh.

Character from here:

I Didn't Know You Cared

I loved the droll humour of the books (and the TV series)

Love the stories about the screen names!

Mine is a variant of a college nickname that I was stuck with against my will, but later embraced (because it stuck for good). The story of my receiving it involves a new grad student with an odd sense of humor joining the group I ran with, a friend of a friend of a friend, a Nashville music studio, and a rejected wannabe singer's demo tape (poor guy--I'm sure he's much nicer than his singing).

Mine comes from two things:
1. 'Tabby' comes from my full name, Tabitha :D (And also my love of cats... when I was in second grade, I always wore a cat ear headband... People called me 'Tabby Cat' and the 'Tabby' part stuck....)
2. 'Poynter' comes from Dougie Poynter, the bassist from my favourite band, McFly. I hate my last name, anyways, and will not give up on the fact that someday I WILL marry Dougie, so I actually sign my name 'Tabitha Poynter' now XD

This has been a great read!

Well, mine is not very original either. When I first signed up on LT I chose kirbyjack, which is our dog's first and middle names. That is my classroom library account. I then decided after about a year (and about a month of discovering chat) to create a home account with the name kirbyowns. Kirby is pretty obvious again, but "owns" is because the library represents the books I own (at home). Since GD and HE are the two groups I frequent, most just call me Kirby no matter which account I'm logged in under.

Esta1923 tells my name and, for the math-literate, my age. (On Flickr I seem to be that sometimes, estawolf at others. . . please check there and see my pix when you have spare time)

Love these stories! To explain mine, I'm cranky, crabby, like to be left alone with my books. And I like how the word "misanthrope" sounds. My other favorite word is "professorial". Word I hate the most? "moist". ....ick....

My name spawned from a book about Russian peasants during the age of the Bolsheviks, that despite my numerous attempts to finish, still remained on my shelf collecting dust at the time of trying to come up with a screen name (for a different site). After years of having the thing eye me down with a vengeance, I finally gave it away to a thrift store.

Catnip was too common, but I love the word and connotations... and I love owls, hence Owlnip!
I picked it for DeviantArt, when I wanted to post a photo of a fluffy little sock owl I had made.

>89 Owlnip:: I love your screen name and had wondered about its origin!

My name Navarone is taken from the book The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean. A great book that i´ve read many times. Liked the name and it sounded pretty cool (at least to me).

Good movie, too.

I flipped open my big book of myths and legends, and there staring back at me was Tane, a Polynesian god of light.

Trouble is Tane is becoming quite common when you google it, so I've been using needlemind on other sites (just a random coming together of two words), but even that isn't unique to me...

I may need to rethink this whole "naming" thing if I want to find something really individual.