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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[–] Birch 4 points 11 hours ago

Birch, please.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours 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] 1 points 11 hours ago

I studied abroad while the Two and a half Men season with Ashton Kutcher aired. A guy at a pizza place always wanted to chat but he barely spoke any English and somehow he really wanted to tell me that I look like Ashton Kutcher. Had similar length beard and hair at the time. A few days after that I signed up on Reddit.

[–] LouSlash 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I used to play GH3 on PS2 a lot and i played boss battles quite frequently

One time, in another game called Soldat, when a clan was recruiting they told me to change my old nickname since it was bizarre (i was 15 yo). I was looking for inspiration and quickly came up with Lou (final boss in GH3), added ` so i would be recognised easily while also not impersonating anyone unintentionally.

Few months passed by and i saw someone on some Soldat-related IRC channel chilling with my nickname and that person wasn't actually impersonating me (he/she used that nickname for much longer time than me since "Lou" is actually a first name which for me, as a native polish speaker, wasn't that obvious at the time) so that huge coincidence made me come up with an addition to my nickname - 2nd boss in GH3, famous guitarist - Slash. In the end i started using LouSlash`

As time passed by, in some places/websites/games i couldn't use ` so i drop it occasionally.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

CB radio user names are called handles. One of my nicknames is The Vandal. I think Subterranean Homesick Blues is one of Dylan's best. Violà.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours 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] 1 points 14 hours ago

I was eating something when I made the account. Make a wild guess what it might have been.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

I opened a physical dictionary to a random page and pointed to a word without looking.

First attempt was diarrhea

[–] captain_aggravated 1 points 15 hours ago

I was promoted from the rank of Commander.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

My husband’s nickname for me. I was born in the holler in Appalachia and am a woodsy pixie. It stuck and is now my trail name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

First shiny Pokemon I ever got. Basculin carried my team a lot, hence the name "CaptainBasculin".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I love airplanes and was excited to see a “modern” one where you could slide back the canopy just like in all those old WWII movies! It’s even ok to fly with it open (a little)!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_American_AA-5

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

it just means emoticon in french canadian

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

Bitwarden username generator 👍

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

Tally Hall (band) → callyral (pseudonym + username) → cally (nickname)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Way more years ago than I would like to admit, when I was in my teens, I learned to play a Fender Mexican Stratocaster. It became my name on my BBS, and has stuck ever since.

Most people think it has to do with FM radio.

Edit: Also, this question has managed to get replies from almost all of the prolific participators on Lemmy. Nice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

Do you play the Steely Dan classic FM on your FMstrat?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

Patrik/Pat is just my name, sometimes use Legendbird on sites because once it was the first thing I thought about (Zapdos, to be exact).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

M is the letter my real name starts with, and 137 has been my favourite number since I was a kid, and I still think is the coolest number (has nothing to do with 1337, as some people have previously thought).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

My poochie was clinically depressed

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I really liked Weird Al when I was like 12. Still do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day 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] 1 points 23 hours ago

Just a greeting used in an RPG I really liked. As pretty much the only formal greeting in its setting, it seemed very overused, so a friend and I started using it in our friend group as a meme, and I decided that it actually goes pretty hard as a username.

Finn from Enderal

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[–] ChaoticCookie 2 points 1 day ago

I’m chaotic and I like cookies, nothing more to it!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Title of a book by my favourite author Jonathan Carroll. Almost all of my various handles over my time online have been some variation of one of his book titles because they're so unique. I used one on Reddit and some Nazi started stalking me, and it turns out some lady on Twitter uses it as her handle there, so he kept messaging me and calling me Stephanie.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

At first I lurked on my boyfriend's account. We had both left Reddit during the API debacle, but I wasn't ready to rejoin social media yet, so he hopped on Lemmy first.

But as he shared links and news and memes with me, and I scrolled the comments, I started wanting to participate. The first few times I felt drawn to comment (but didn't yet), I wanted to ask people what the reasoning was behind their thoughts. That stuff is interesting to me.

So when I finally sat down and made an account for myself, it was the first thought in my head. I haven't found myself asking anybody about their reasoning since then, but I still like the name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

What's your reasoning for not asking someone's reasoning? Or in other words, if the reasoning behind their thoughts is interesting then why stop before your started?

Also sorry i just have lots of questions. Was there a certain type of comment that you wanted to know reasoning behind, or just in general? For instance were you wanting to understand hateful comments, or political perspectives outside your own? That sort of thing

Neat username regardless!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Pretty much all of the above. Sometimes it was a silly comment or argument that didn’t quite make sense. Sometimes it was like, “what are you trying to say?” but specifically asking for one’s reasoning helps clarify things.

I still might ask it some time, but I’ve found the environment here to be more hostile to rational thought than I’d originally expected… which was a sad discovery. A lot of people seem to react without first comprehending what they’re reading.

Also, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day 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] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Perhaps the best name in the thread.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I like the word argyle and I'm angry

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

no imagination and I thpught it was funny image (current acc avatar)

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