How did your online name come into being and when?

snoopsheepysheep in reference to my rural irish roots and fondness for both hip-hop and the ridiculous.

darraghmac is my firstname and some of my last name. booooring.

For several years I posted on another messageboard as C J. One of the moderators on that board was a creepy guy who used to hit on all the females looking for internet romances/cyber sex with them, and he started making life difficult for me on the board because I refused to give him my telephone number. Because I wouldn't stand for any nonsense and refused to be bullied by him I somehow earned a fond nickname of 'Unruly' from one of my other online mates. It just stuck, and I quite like it.

Because I wouldn't stand for any nonsense

that would have been AN innit.

p.s. fancy a cyber?

i was "k chu" on here once, but then everyone whose surname begins with a C seem to have adopted the "<first name> c" convention so i thought i'd follow the fashion

i want to hear about Ian c=====8's story

This (also first name + first letter of last name, boringly) was only something temporary as I didn't plan on staying here for long. Still only use it on ILX - if you see a StanM anywhere else, it's not me.

I used to change my name all the time between different things starting with "ger" (the start of my first name) - ger-iatric ger-anium ger-onimo ger-offmyfoot etc.

I started using ger-onimo all the time for online gaming, mainly counterstrike. The problem was that lots of Germans put '[ ger]name' to indicate their nationality next to their name - so everyone assumed I was German and my alias was 'onimo'. I dropped the "ger" bit to avoid any confusion.

This is my real name.

My parents had a premature baby boy a few years before I was born who only lived for a day or two. They named him Matthew, and when it came time to name me they couldn't agree on anything other than Matthew again. So, I have a dead older brother with the same name as me, hence Matt #2. True story!

"snoball" is from playing Elite - your commander name is the same as the filename used to save your progress, and on a DFS equipped BBC Micro is limited to seven letters, so that is why there is no "w". Also I was playing a lot of arcade games at the time, and could enter my name as "SNO" on games that only allowed three letter names. I still use "snoball" when playing online. There's no reason for the "s" to be lower case, I just think it looks better.

I am a dull twangly interlude by some blokes from Essex, but I just liked the sound of the word at the time and never thought of anything snappier.

Matt, in all honesty, how do you feel about that? I don't think I would/could do that to my second child. I don't even want to name my second baby Amelie because that was an option we decided against when we had our first one.

I had metalmuzak but I don't think I ever used it here. Still use it on AIM tho. It's a combo of my love for noise/hard sounds and soft sounds.

Stevie Nixed? How hard can it be? A combo of my love for Fleetwood Mac and Punk/Noise (nihilistic sounds you could say). I'm actually a bit proud of that one. :-)

obscure seinfeld reference

cripplingly low self-esteem/tendency towards laboured puns

Blue Jam reference to apocryphal musician who writes song dedicated to himself and then pumps thirty bullets into his own head (in what's described as a 'gang-motivated' attack).

Matt, in all honesty, how do you feel about that? I don't think I would/could do that to my second child. I don't even want to name my second baby Amelie because that was an option we decided against when we had our first one.

I was actually the 4th child and we weren't told about it until I was 20 or so, so I don't have any really strong feelings. I just use the name as a kind of memoriam or keepsake or whatever. My parents couldn't agree on a name because my dad was a pent-up angry man who would always remember an argument he'd had with someone who shared a suggested name, or there'd be a celebrity or politician he didn't like or something. So my mum told me once. She must have had the patience of a saint, jeez.

When I created my nu-ILX account, I didn't know I wasn't going to be able to change my screen name. I had planned on making one post from HI DERE and then going back to one of my regular names, none of which were actually my original online moniker. Silly, silly me.

Can you not just do it from a different email account? Easy enough to open a Lycos account or whatever (I've got 3 of them now, for this reason).

xpost Sorry if that came across as a criticism. Really didn't mean to do that.

What Matt said, Dan. For some fucked up reason (uh, stupidity no doubt) I could only log in from stevienixed on other comps. My Nathalie account is the work one.

I always use my first name here, but on AIM and various other places, I go by muppet or muppetbaby because I am basically a complete muppet. I am terribly clumsy and ditzy and simple tasks like washing the dishes/walking into a room/putting something under the grill tend to end in painful disaster and leave Neil helpless with laughter unable to utter anything but "you're such a muppet". It seems like the obvious name to use as a nickname.

if ailsa is taken anywhere I'm registering, I use ailsa_xx as I used to sign all my posts to Sinister "ailsa xx".

Obvious derivation from my surname; but it was never a nickname, I'd never heard anyone use it until an aussie colleague adopted it for me a few years ago.

Saddam kept a close eye on Moqtada al-Sadr because the young man inherited a wide network of mosques, schools and social centers built up by his father. Some educated Shiites dismissed Moqtada as a zatut, or ignorant child. Some called him "Mulla Atari," because he apparently enjoyed videogames as a kid.

There's a hotel I have to drive past occasionally - in fact, I drove past it this morning. I'd see road signs to it, and think: that sounds like a nice name. So, I started using it.

The "Mk 2" is just because this is my second ILX account. I'm convinced that spam harvesters regularly grabbed emails from the old ILX - I had an email address that I only ever posted here, which, by the time of the move to the present server, was getting about 200 spam emails per week. So, I dumped that email address, and registered a new account.

Combination of my love for S&M and my love for Bob Passantino, the anti-cult worker and Christian evangelist of the 1990s

Original was something stupid a friend of the ex-wife used to call me about 20 years ago, this is just the streamlined version (although Scottish blokes whose names contract to 'Al' often get called aldo anyway).

my hands are like those of jabba the hutt

dull twangly interlude

RONG

Mine was a university-era joke too lengthy to be worth explaining. I've played records out about twice under the same

i've just always liked the name ruby. but i think the first time i used it to register somewhere, it was taken, and the first thing that popped in to my head was rubyred. i have a couple of online friends who still insist on calling me ruby even though they know my real name (justine).

'Ste' is me first name, part of anyway

slightly more interesting is my name used on other things such as flickr, my blog, and counterstrike : "qaopspace"

any gamer will know why - it's the old keyboard selections for direction control in games (q = up, a = down, o = left, p = right, and space is 'fire')

One of my friends called me 'quack space' when he first saw it, and that's kind've now stuck as my nick name.

As you might have been able to guess, ENBB are my initials. The other screename I use on aim and elsewhere is from the title of one of my favorite Luna songs but is kind of embarassing if people don't know that. I picked it at 18 and didn't think about that aspect.

Some friends I play darts with started calling me it around the same time as I started posting on ILX.

They also call me other things....

up to the oche??

name of forgotten indie band with one word substituted for my own first name. now truncated.

Markelby is something the lovely Laura Llew from Sinister started calling me - derived, I assume, from the short story Bartleby the Scrivener. Biondino (which I don't think I've ever actually used on ILE, but which is my commonest online handle) is a nickname given to me by my friends when I lived in Italy in 1993-4 - it means "Blondie" (masculine version) and was used to differentiate me from our other friend Mark, who is black. His nickname, btw, was "Perfect Mark", so I was quite glad they didn't extend that logic to me.

As for Mark C - I decided I didn't want to stick with Markelby and chose something nice and neutral for nu-ILX. I'm a grown up these days.

what's Italian for Baldie?

I still think you should have gone with Barry Lasagne.

"mike a" is pretty obvious: first name, first initial of last name.

i've also been known to go by "djearlybird" online. that was my theoretical dj alias when i lived in seattle - theoretical in that i never actually promoted myself as "dj early bird" when i dj'ed. my wife came up with that moniker due to my propensity to show up early for everything.

what's Italian for Baldie?

"Calvino"

When me and Mister M started going out, we went to Edinburgh for the weekend, and as we passed the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, I started going into a ridiculously over the top "poor wee Bobby, don't die poor Bobby" accent while I told him the story. Then he tried to make me do the accent again and I said "no, fuck off, I'm not some kind of performing accent monkey".

very good! as is Matt#2's

My username is a tribute to the WWII fighter pilot ace Samuel Blissett, who's trademark line was "Sam out!". Write it backwards, and voila!

up to the oche??

Well yes, they do that.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/mmi0233l.jpg

http://www.bobbygeorge.com/images/bobby2006-01-10a.jpg

Geezer

That's kind of a poor cartoon. He's facing the wrong way, and they look like they're pregnant. D+ for flourish on cartoonist's name.

A+ for photo.

Do they call you geezer as well? You don't seem like a 'geezer', really. I don't think.

That's the famous right-angled oche, only used in 3 villages in North Yorkshire.

Bobby is the geezer, isn't he? How can anybody be as great, or as 'London' as Bobby George? It's just not possible.

http://www.winmau.com/images/bobby_george/bobby_george.gif

xpost

I don't know, CJ, it's not for me to say :) It's unbecoming to assume geezer-dom for oneself, you must wait for it to be bestowed. I live in hope.

My name is Alex and,..... well, I live in NYC.

Oh, and it dates back to the mid-90's or so. I was a regular contributor to a message board dedicated to a certain band (guess which?), and to distinguish m'self from another participant named Alex, I appended the "..in NYC." And it's stuck.

When I was little, my sister's boyfriend nicknamed me "Hardrock" for some damn reason. I mentioned that once to Mike McCarthy, who gave me the screen name "Rock Hardy" when he used me in one of his movies.

xpost -- the Starland Vocal Band?

"jaymc" started as a Yahoo e-mail address 5 or 6 years ago. I wanted to do my initials plus DOB, but there was already another "jmc325," so I got creative. If I'd known I was going to be posting to ILX for the next 4.5 years, I'd have probably picked something more clever, but I'm also too attached to it now to change it.

suggested hilarious user name adjuncts for ilx regulars:

jaymc.xls
nabisco otm
ban louis jagger

one reader submission "rapey mo" rejected by stuck up bureaucrats

i wanted to eat some

creepe kenan

Back in the days of sinister, I was "mollydee", which showed not only mah last name, but also my crush on this silly Japanese band who sang songs about Max Eider.

I like Mummenschanz. That shit is fucked up.

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/56707097.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193CC300C081D9F4700E0C2363068F0FF67043FA26C7018C9D3A55A1E4F32AD3138

Shakey Mo Collier is a minor character in Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels.

Wow, shows how long ago I read those -- I have no memory of the character.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubbelverbrennung

Nabisco dates its founding back to 1898, a decade during which the bakery business underwent a major consolidation. Early in the decade, bakeries throughout the country were consolidated regionally, into companies such as Chicago's American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company, the New York Biscuit Company, and the United States Baking Company. In 1898, the National Biscuit Company was formed from the combination of those three; the merger resulted in a company with 114 bakeries across the United States and headquartered in New York City.

The Nabisco logo, a horizontal ellipse with a series of antenna-like lines protruding from the top, is known as the "Nabisco Thing."

I actually did not know this back when I was "nabiscothingy!"

mine just popped in my head when i first registered. i dont like it much and i dont use it for any other site. i wanted to use my real name, kate, but i had already figured out there would be some problems with that.

duuuuuuuudes

from time immemorial

i thought jaymc was a jesus and mary chain thing. my name is from god.

short version of my real name.

It is a proude olde family name, acquired by a distant ancestor who was sent out to steal cattle from the Isle of Jersey and returned with a herd of Manx cats.

My nick is a random unix library I chose when I couldn't find any other reasonable nick that wasn't already registered in AIM.

When I started college, big glam rock phase.

I got mine from Second Life. I won't be getting back the two hours I spent there being stalked and hit on and buffered, so I try to console myself that I at least got something out of the experience.

roxymuzak, ever since I first saw your moniker, I have lived in hope of going into a national retailer of some kind and hearing a muzak version of 'Amazona'.

italo svevo's hero of course.

you'll never guess...

do you smoke?

http://www.movietickets.ca/images/2007/07/04/remy.jpghttp://www.onlinecooking.net/news/NewsImages/coffee_bean_single.jpg

I am short. It amused me. I didn't know that we wouldn't be able to change our names any more in nu-ilx.

(also, i lied about where my name came from)

more logical is that tha rat got it from you

picked it in tribute to my favorite pin up star/ 40s actress, adele jergens

http://www.skylighters.org/yankmagazine/images/yank11245adelejergenslg.jpg

^^^not true

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/9288/welcom15oo.jpg

B.L.A.M. began as Big Loud Mountain Ape, a reference to my friends' propensity for calling me Big Loud or the Yeti ( a mountain ape, of sorts ).

I then shortened it to BLMA.

About two years ago, Ally suggested that I switch it to B.L.A.M. I did so.

It has stuck.

Went on a trip to Chicago a few years ago with wife and two friends. At some restaurant we were talking about the unpronounceable qualities of three of our Finnish last name. My friend's name, J0kin3n, got mangled into a bunch of variations before "joygoat" made us laugh the most.

This was then combined with my cousin's made up bible verse from years earlier about how "man should not lie with any beast, be it a best of burden or a beast of pleasure" which then led to the "paingoat" being the counterpart to the joygoat. This was a running gag all weekend and ended up being made into crudely photoshopped t-shirts later on, and these became me and the wife's AIM handles - joy for me, pain for her.

It helps that it's usually always available for any sort of online username thing.

got drunk at a friends house, did the robot.

I set my monkey on a log
and ordered him to do the dog.
He wagged his tail and shook his head
and went and did the cat instead.

-- Bob Zimmerman, circa 1965

Or the robot, as the case might be.

i thought jaymc was a jesus and mary chain thing.
-- chaki, Thursday, October 4, 2007 11:56 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i thought this too

did the robot

your missus is very tolerant

This is a great thread!

Back in BBS days, at least fifteen years ago, I was signing onto a new board (at Slutsky's behest) and my old nick, Liquid Flounder wouldn't fit in the 8-character maximum on the site. So I picked up the nearest book, which was The Murderers' Who's Who, and opened it randomly to a photo of a brand of bug-killer arsenic a woman had used to poison her husband, called Antexit.

It's nice because it doesn't mean anything and you never find it anywhere else for any reason ever.

Ha, I haven't even heard much JAMC. Maybe only "Sometimes Always" when I first started posting.

I'm disappointed that Colonel Poo hasn't posted on this thread.

-- Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 4 October 2007 15:32 (Thursday, 4 October 2007 15:32)

Ah. He explained this to me. His friends gave him the name years ago. There are no plans to seek promotion.

do you smoke?

-- remy bean, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:41 (Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:41)

Ha ha ha nice one...

Trayce is a tweaking of my real name. I used to just be Trace years ago but it was so ordinary. So I chucked the y in to erm, gothify it up or some damn thing (hey it was years ago). It stuck. No one spelled it that way back then and now everyone does - esp guys?!

I was making concerted efforts on an internet dating site (don't) and needed a name that sounded kind of nice and meant bugger all. And it's a nice town.

because i am the second homosexual ever to exist.

no, really, it came about in like 1999 when i changed my AIM screen name every week and one time I settled on "Homosexual II" for a few days.. it always kind of cracked me up.

my usual name online is either mandalion (obvious.. and also probably laura llew-derived) or le french dip, which is just an item on the denver diner's menu.

My name went from being ad nauseam, which was an idea for a zine that I had which never got off the ground, to adnaus23, which came about after trying to register an email address. naus is a more first-namey sort of variation that I use when signing up for online accounts where it hasn't been taken already (like here). I've started to think that I should grow up and start using my real name, but I enjoy not showing up until the tenth page of a Google search (also, occasional trollish tendencies).

I didn't want to use my real name anymore and it sounded right.

this name is obv my name but with extra letters of super creativity and was an accident kinda in like 1999 when i was changing the 'from' field in yahoo mail for one email i was sending to a friend that maybe referenced faux anger or riot grrls or something? i don't know, but i forgot to change it back and then everyone was responding with hi rrrrrrrrobyn! etc and being happy abt getting to type all those extra r's maybe, which i thought was neat

ap0emab0uteverything (with o's not 0's and sometimes of dif spellings) is from a steven wright quote i started using as my yahoo mail sig in again like 1998/99: "i was reading the dictionary. i thought it was a poem about everything."
it's one of those things that still hasn't gotten old to me and in fact has gotten kinda profound and will prob be the name of my memoirs or whatever when i am 88.

i feel like i've explained that on ilx before

Bill Drummond baiting/tribute (probably both) combined with a nickname that is a shortened version of my last name, which is of obvious Scottish heritage. I often betray that by mixing my Scotch with Coke but I am still young. And horny.

And no, not even I know how I came up with "Esteban Buttez".

http://www.imissthe80s.com/repoman.jpg

Emilio Estevez =~ Esteban Buttez