Why Did You Choose Your Username

Feel free to add an an entry about your username below!

AngelKat

Drusilla picked it...

art_wolf

Cool picture I have hanging up. Have had it for ages and its by Art Wolfe.

atlas

I originally handed in my student card, and said "Use my first name, please". I got an email later giving me my username as 'James' ( my middle name ). When I asked them to change, I decided to go with something a little cooler. I had been up for hours before that playing Mechwarrior somethingorother, and the Atlas mech was my favourite. I also, occasionally, feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Attol

My name, but backwards.

beimear

It's eimear, with a "b".

bilco

Cause as a fresher I though it was the character's name from The Hobbit

bunbun

It's kinda from my surname, in a way... Also elephant made me.

butlerx

i miss typed butlerc a few years ago and it stuck

cain

I always thought Cain got a raw deal. Firstborn son of Adam, built the first city on earth and he's remembered for allegedly killing his brother Abel though the evidence is, to put it mildly, unconvincing and God was clearly biased against him. When I joined Redbrick, Cain was gone so I got Caine, which was the spelling of the name in an RPG I played at the time. Dropped the 'e' in my second year.

calyx

Misread the name of a song. In a perfect world, I would have been calx.

cambo

An abbreviation of sorts on my surname (campbell)... original eh?

cammy

I was using it as a web handle long before I joined Redbrick. It comes from the name of one of my first roleplaying characters that wasn't just a bunch of stats. The name for that roleplaying character though, came from the computer game Streetfighter 2.

Well actually cammy was my second choice. I would have liked to use The_Dead_One but that exceeds the 8 character limit.

carri

I wanted giggleberry but its too long. So me being my epically cool self just used my actual 'name'.

cianky

I mean it's quite literally just my first name, plus the first character of my surname, along with a 'y' chucked on the end of it. But it works!

coconut

On Clubs and Socs Day 2005 I was put on the spot while joining Redbrick (LIKE EVERYONE ELSE WAS)! It went a little something like this:

atlas: "Okay, and pick a username."
Me: "What... now?!"
atlas: "Yes."
Me: "Right now?!?"
atlas: "Yes."
Me: "Errr.." *looks down at the free chocolate being given away - notices the wrappers and ingredients* "Em.. coconut?"
atlas: "kk lol fag"
Me: "I'll change it later!"

That last part was, evidently, a lie.

colmmacc

I was assigned the username colmmacc for the purposes of my first ever internet account (and job), colmmacc@clubi.ie , way back when in 1995/6 (I think). Ever since, I've used it for all my accounts and it works at every domain on which I hold an account. Despite the huge coincidence, my username is fact not just a mere contracted concatonation of my real name "Colm MacCarthaigh", but is fact an acronym. It stands for "Colm's On-Line Memetic Mechanism [for] Accessing Complicated Computers".

cooker3

It is my username for the lab machines in the CA building, it's not to do with an obcession with cookers!

credak

Originally I wanted creadak (notice the extra a), cause Crea Dak was a character I had on Guild wars. I wrote it down, and the admins left out the extra a. I kinda like it better this way now...

david

The year that I joined DCU Hasselhoff was given a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. With all the new challenges in my life at that time I found that he was someone I could look up to. I could admire his achievements. He was like an uncle to me. I grew up on Kinght Rider and am looking forward to the new movie coming out this year. And then when I got a little older and started noticing girls I got interested in Baywatch. I wanted to be the stud that he was on that show. Appropriately in 2000 when I joined redbrick he released one of his many hit albums in Germany - "The Magic Colleciton". So I chose david as my redbrick username because ... well actually its not that interesting really, its my name in real life.

distro

My username before I joined college was "DistroByte" but that was one too many characters for redbrick LDAP. So I chose distro and it stuck.

DoC

It's the initials of my real name. I've been called DoC in real life by friends, family, etc, for as long as I can remember.

dogmeat

I was attached to the dog in the fallout games.

drag0n

Friends in college said that I needed a nickname, probably because they're too lazy to say my full name "Diarmuid" and I find "Diarm" quite creepy, so basically, "dragon" popped into their heads and it stuck! I used be called siphi (for no particular reason, it was a random name I was known by onli ne), then changed to drag0n (with a zero). The zero is because the user "dragon" is allready taken on rb. But everyone loved the new name so I added the zero. If you hey the other dragon, you generally get a confused hey in response, so I generally have heys disabled. anyways...

dramabob

When I signed up, along with everyone else in known history, back in 2004 I honestly can't remember being asked to pick a username. Imagine my surprise when later that week I got an email telling me my username was "roibeard" (er, my first name). Boo-urns. I approached one of the Kings Of Redbrick (dizer, atlas or phaxx, can't remember which) and asked to change my username to the much cooler sounding "silentbob" of "Clerks" fame (and several other, less good, movies). Further boo-urns ensued when t'was revealed that "silentbob" had one character too many, so having joined DCU Drama in addition to RB, I opted to go with "dramabob" - thus was born dramabob. w00t. I admit to being miffed upon hearing that both "bob" and "bobb" were already used up, but found out many many years later that "bobb" was a next door neighbour of mine in my long lost childhood in the mid 1970's. Bizarre.

dregin

The lead guitarist with the Backyard Babys' name is dregen[sic]. I took it and stuck an x on the end for a few years as a forum alias but then knocked off the x. tada!!

drusilla

My nick was surprisingly enough, from the character on Buffy! Friends of mine in second year of school gave it to me when they noticed the similarities between myself and the insane vampire. Funnily, dru was my second nick on RedBrick, before that I was zerocool

duff

It's my surname.

eamon_c

I regret this I regret this I regret this I regret this Call me Flannel

elmer

My username came from my first ever email address(elmer@clubi.ie) which i chose based on the looney tunes character elmer fudd

exzantia

As many, many people have pointed out, my name seems like a random string of letters, and it kinda is... When I was signing up for a Yahoo mail account in '98 everything I tried was already taken. I was not having under-scores or numbers so I decided to come up with something that would always be available! I thus far have succeeded.

eondev

I use a different username elsewhere but decided it was time for a change. I always liked the word Eon and I started to develop (dev) an MMORPG around the time I was joining redbrick so I chose EonDev. Yes, horribly boring but /shrug

fatwa

In first year, whilst learning to program, my friend Andrew wrote a program that printed out "That's a fatwa on you, mein freund". I thought it was funny and it must have stuck in my head for redbrick registering. Also, it's short for "fat wanker".

fox_chic

Cause I'm an xphile and Mulder's first name is Fox. :)

fructus

I am sometimes get called "Fructis", "Fruitcake" or "Fruitcaek", despite "fructus" and "fructis" (the shampoo) being spelt alike thats not where the username came from. Once opon a time I was trying to come up with some username that wasn't going to taken everything time I tried signing up to things, After some thinking I came up with "Fructus Sum" which is latin for "To Be Fruit" which was as close as I could get to "I am mad" in latin with out it being long or just not to my liking. Of course when Redbrick doesn't allow that many chars so I dropped the sum and go by "Fructus" which yes means "Fruit" a long which a whole lot more.

Of Course Fruitcake was my "friends" when they found out where the user name came from after I got sick of the shampoo comments... not sure is it better or worst. haha

Suprisingly Fructus which I like more is starting to be taken on a lot of sites. :(

gizmo

My nick came from a combination of thinking gizmo was a pretty cool name due to that little flurry critter in Gremlins and also cns putting me on the spot on Clubs And Socs day when I first joined so that I couldn't think of anything else. Strange, but true.

gary

Well, my original name was garyod and there was wordplay went around with that *cough*gayrod*cough*, so I got it changed to my actual name :)

gavin

I needed a username I wouldn't forget and seeing as Gavin was written on my underpants I decided to use that. Handy quinkadink that it is also my real name eh !

geekity

Tis from PhD comic, the Thesis arc (a PhD comic take on Matrix) and the character which loosely coincided with Trinity in the Matrix series. It's been my profile on most things for a while, although it was supposed to be geekity2 originally, someone just didn't bother with the 2 when they created my account.

gmblitis

Would've been gamblitis but for those dam restrictions!so the idea came in the first place came from my unhealthy obsession with horses and cards!

greenday

I was wearing a greenday hoodie and panicked.

gw

They are my initials.

hauk

Well, I got put on the spot when I first went to play UT in secondary school(We used to play it on the old shitty computers they had, at lunch time). So Dalamar from #intersocs, who was in my school, started to lose the plot with player12, and shouted at player12 to change his/her name. So I tried to think of a good name. And at the time I was reading Stormblade from the Dragonlance series, and Hauk was a ranger in that book. So I eh "temporarily" used the name.. It wasn't meant to stick! But I like it now ^_^

hurl

My second name is Hurrell and people cant pronouce it so I went by hurl. Turns out Hurrell was originally Hurl, you know, in the old country, so its my family name. No, I dont have a vomit fetish, but I'm always open to new experiences :P

ian

Its my name JACKASS!

jesjes

My name is Jessica. And people from home call me Jesi, and at some stage during sixth year I decided I liked Jess much more. So when I got THE INTERNETS, I just called myself jesjes. It stuck.

johan

Was given this nick when a German Assistant in Secondary School tried to pronounce my name, Eoghan, and came out with Johan, and it stuck

keloe

I wrote down kehoe, my surname and an old nickname, on the slip. However, due to my incapability to write h's correctly, the admins read it as keloe.

koffee

I was holding a cup of coffee when I signed up after coconut's Ruby talk in first year. I was put on the spot. also:

I like coffee, I drink a lot of coffee, I'm known for drinking large amounts of caffeinated beverages. It made sense

kpodesta

Because that's my real name. I thought Redbrick was some email yoke - all else fails, I was getting a decent email address.

lil_cain

Wanted lil_cian, as he is the smaller Cian, it was mistyped.

At this point, I've grown quite fond of it. Unlike lil_cian, it makes me almost unique on the internet.

lithium

Coz I like the sound of it. And coz it goes crazy when you put it in water. And not because of the Nirvana song.

macbain

He wanted the username 'mcbain' but Karlos (mcbain) got it before him. Being original, Sarv decided that macbain would do instead, so he could forever confuse new users between himself and Karl.

maK

Drugs.

marvin

There are three references here : Starvin Marvin from South Park, Marvin The Paranoid Android from Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy and Marvin the Martian from the Warner Bros cartoon. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which one was the greatest influence (hint: it wasn't Starvin Marvin).

mctastic

I mean, it's pronounced "mactastic", but it's spelled "mctastic".

I'm often referred to as Mac, though I heard there was another one during sign ups (looking at you maK > . >) so I went with something more elaborate, "mactastic".

Sadly it was one letter too long, and this prompted zergless to suggest cutting the first a. I did as many first years do while choosing a username, and crumbled under the mounting pressure of the line waiting to sign up behind me.

merchelo

On a school trip back when I was young, sitting in an italian hotel, talking to the chef about football, he suddenly asked my name, and he couldn't pronounce my surname, Maxwell, so he decided to italianiase my name, by calling me Roberto Merchello, I thought the name was cool, and started to use it in championship manager, and after registering with the most shittest nick ever, "partyb" I changed it to the 8 char nick, merchelo.

mephisto

Diablo and Baal were taken, and i registered after staggering in to college, having been up about 20 hours straight playing a LAN game of Diablo 2. Also my trademark nickname was too long.

mo

Due to my considerable soccer talent, I was nicknamed "mo" after Mo Johnston, the scottish football hero.

MoJu

It's in a similar vein to HoJu(Homer Junior) from the Simpsons. Given to me by a someone on a forum after they saw a picture of me and thought I was someone named Mordeth. So they suggested Mordeth Junior which was then condensed to MoJu. I then adopted it as my second online nick.

montoya

The name is that of a character from the book "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman. The specific character is Inigo Montoya, a Spanish swordsman out for revenge against a 6-fingered man who killed Inigo's father.

moridin

The most evil and therefore cool character in a series of books that I was reading. Said series of books has since degenerated into a mush of crap writing. Boo.

nanaki

Used the name on forums for a while, first thing that came to mind when signing up. Favourite character from FF7. And no, I didn't use a soft.

niT

Originally my name was a combination of many words that described me, and was dreamt up whilst I was at college in Aylesbury. It all started when I got a demo copy of Diablo from my cousin in Singapore, and us lads built our first LAN at my mate Dave's house. We also played Carmegeddon, the Star Wars game and Quake 2 (of which my mate Dave had a 600mhz processor and TWO 3dfx cards linked up in parallell - he was our God). It was necessary for me to have a character name in Diablo so I chose Nitsuj Buaya Chen, the latter two meaning 'Crocadile man that snaps up ladies' (in Singapore slang) and monkey (as my star sign is golden monkey). I later joined a CS clan called Black Legion and people naturally shortened my name down to nit. At that time I also had a friend who was called 'kippy' in real life and online, so I started using nit in real life too. Later I joined a 'talker' called theManor which was a twin site to the LambdaMoo, there was a guy there who set it all up and went by the nick 'beN', he and girlfriend sadly died in a car accident and so manor spods paid tribute but capitalising the final letter of their nick, hence why I use niT.

noelfitz

8 letter truncation of my real name (boring but true.)

noodlez

Shorter version of one of my most commonly used user names. I picked that one before when I needed a quick username for an IRC channel and I was eating a bowl of noodles.

orly

It was my nom de plume for a punk fanzine I wrote when I was in school. pooka signed me up for redbrick the first week of college with it as he thought it was my real name ;-)

ornat

You'd have to ask my parents that question. Ornat is my real name, and unlike popular belief, no, I am not a guy!

p

Back the old days of IOL/Indigo's IRC servers I used a variety of names, which all began with the letter p. Eventually, I ditched the different nicknames and used ^P^. Redbrick doesn't support weird characters though, so now it's just p. It also happens to be my middle initial.

Paddez

Used to use the name Paddee on various other online communities/games, Wanted an Irish sounding name so I settled on the variation of Paddy with 2 E's instead of the Y. When signing up for Redbrick the person who took down my name either misheard me or I said it wrong, whatever the reason i am now an Irish-Mexican that goes by the name of Paddez

phaxx

Originally from the character Lord Fax in the book Dragonriders Of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. I used Lord_Fax in MS Comic Chat for a while. I saw somebody using a 'ph' instead of an 'f', and thought, in that usual 13-year-old way, OMGZ COOL, and promptly became LordPhaxx. I was LordPhaxx for a few years, until until around 16 when I met a bunch of other Irish nerds one afternoon. jerry was among them, and commented, "With a name like LordPhaxx, I expected you to be taller."

So er, I dropped the pretentious 'Lord', and I've been 'phaxx' ever since.

See, nothing to do with fax machines! :)

polka

When I was around 16 or so, I had started using "polkabunny" as a username for quite a few things, or a variation of it when it was taken. Before I came to DCU I was on the First Year IRC channel on Quakenet, and eventually got too lazy to write in polkabunny all the time. Shortened it to polka, then just used it when I got to DCU. And now, I prefer polka. (I also like polka dots, but can't dance the actual polka.)

receive

It was Michelle Smith (swallow) that dragged me along to sign up during first year, so I'd handed over my 4euro before I'd begun to think of a username, so I turned and said "Shit, Michelle, what will I pick?" and she suggested "receive" because it went so well with swallow. Stupidly I agreed, and it stuck (after we found a spell checker to check how to spell it that is), so i never changed it to anything better. Ironically, i never have been at the receiving end of swallows abilities.

r0b

Rob is my name *shock* *gasp* rob was taken so used r0b instead. Amazing story tbh

robby

its short for robert...thats cool no?

ru

I really had no clue what I wanted to have as my username so just picked my most used nick name - ru...short for Ruaidhri...

sadpanda

Well like everyone, I had to pick on the day so i picked a nickname i had been using for yahoo answers. That account has since been deleted for either calling creationists braindead, redneck, ignorant, arrogant fucks or posting a howtohackwindowsandbel33t.on.nimp.org to a "how do i hack and be cool?". Those 2 things happened the same week so it could be either. The nickname originally came up a few years after the sexual harassment panda episode but I was watching some westboro baptist church protests (the "god hates fags"/"god hates ireland"/"god hates sweden" people who shocked even fox). There would always be a bigger counter protest than their protest. One of the counter protesters had on the panda suit and had a sign "Phelps makes me a sad panda". I found that funny and used it for a few sites. Now looking back on it, I don't find it funny at all. Thank you redbrick article for ruining the way I look at my nickname.

sandman

I didn't. It was assigned on the basis that a) I was asleep and b) I read comics, didn't I? Ironically, I hadn't read much Sandman at the time.

scraib

I'm from Kilkenny and 'Scráib' is the Irish for 'Cat-Scratch'! 'Tis a very GAA name, but to be honest I could never play hurling so I picked it really cause it sounded cool...

shaun

After going through a couple of username changes (previously spike, then dilligaf), I settled on my real name. Mud sticks though, and few people actually use it.

shimoda

It was a character in a book (Illusions by Richard Bach) I read during my formative years. Another rb user thought the description of the protagonist was suited to me so I nabbed the name.

singer

I was a singer in a band. The guitarist mocked me for being the singer by calling me "singer". The nickname stuck. Non-Redbrick people address me as singer! My 2nd choice username was "scano".

spanner

In fact eeh! picked it out during the hay days of eeh gift grub and in fairness now sometimes im a bit of a spanner.

spock

I chose spock because I had no idea that it would follow me around for at least the next 10 years. I didn't even know what Redbrick was when I was joining, and when I had a membership form thrust in my face by Hyper on Freshers day 1996, we had three preferences for username. I put down "spock" as my first preference. It wasn't taken, and that is how I didn't end up with the username "data", or "benji".

Steef

When i joined games soc i chose the name of character i liked from a game as my user name, but it ended up with allot of people thinking my real name was steve :( .

svan

Sarunas Vancevicius. First letter of name, then first 3 letters from surname.

Taurus

It is my star sign, so I just went with that. Sounds cool enough. :-)

thedara

My nick was given to me years before redbrick on irc (irc.phishy.net) I was the first person some americans had met called Dara and they found that interesting for some reason or other and hence I became thedara. On redbrick irc i'm known as Darz0re, It was a in-joke at the time when myself and dizer stuck z0re at the end of out names hence thez0rekorp.com and z0re.org

thegirl

induxi0n chose it. I'm the only girl to have ever been in my course (CPSSD) so hence thegirl.

tiernep

I had cindella for a lab tutor in first year. My login was tiernep, which she found hil...arious and started shouting at everybody, "Hey everybody this guys name is turnip". It stuck.

timelady

I was originally known as xmeabhx because that was my name on another site and I was put under pressure on c + s day so I just picked it. When I got sick of it I changed it to timelady because I love doctor who :)

Tiroskan

I needed a name for a character in a RP years ago. Stuck random letters together til I got something vaguely pronouncable and years later here we still are.

tnkrbell

As a kid my dad used to always call me Belle.When I got older and after many trips to Disney I took a loving to the mischiefious tinkerbell from Peter Pan. Tinkerbell though was too long so JesJes decided on tnkrbell instead.

train

It's a shortened version of a gaming nickname I use.

tyro

It means: A beginner in learning something.

tziegler

I have a strange addiction to The West Wing.

undone

Couldn't think of anything on Clubs & Socs day, so for about 2 days my username was my actual name. Then I picked this, because of the Weezer song, but also because I think it's a nice word.

Urizen

A God from one of William Blake's epic poems. Thought it sounded epic, so that seemed right.

voy

My name is Wojtek, pronounced a bit like "VoyTech", so voy is just the first part. I was first called voy in Carlingford Adventure Centre by the instructor in 6th class.

werdz

A long time ago in a net cafe far, far away, a sexy asian friend by the name of quank said "Hey Andrew, stop using the name andrew in CS. Use werdna instead. It's andrew only backwards!" - That lasted about five minutes until people got bored trying to pronounce it ("OMG! WERDNA! QUIT TK'ING YOU NOOB!") and just started shouting werdz instead ("OMG! WERDZ! QUIT TK'ING YOU NOOB!"). And that's my life story up until this point.

wilburt

Long story, guys i used to know named me Wilburtino, i didnt really like it cos they were muppets. However, it grew on me over time. Wanted Wilburtino or Will as my username but they wouldnt let me :( so wilburt was the only one left. Like all rb usernames i think, they are spur of the moment. (or admin mistakes)

zergless

At the time I was playing Starcraft 2 alot and was going to choose watchmecreep but it was too long. So the first thing that came to mind was zergless