The Story Behind Your Username

I've seen a lot of interesting usernames on SK, so I was wondering about what everyone's username meant or if there's a story behind it (except @Griffith. I know Miura stole that name from you!)

Mine is based on the character of L from Death Note, whose real name was revealed to be L Lawliet. I picked this as a username on PSN years ago and it stuck (some friends use that instead of my real name lol). Not an interesting story I'm afraid.

What about you guys?
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Walter Bennett is the name of a character model for one of the scientists from the original Half-Life. Maybe by chance, it was that particular scientist that eventually became a bigger character in the sequels (renamed to Dr. Kleiner).

Back in 1999 or so, a funny little blog named Walter's World chronicled the diary entries and misadventures of Walter. The writer's sense of humor and the character’s stuffy personality were a kind of extension of the tiny material he had to work with—namely, that the scientists all said MY GOODNESS and ran around like ants if you attacked them. All of these things really jibed with me at the time, so I adopted the moniker Walter Bennet on various internet places. It stuck.

I'm a big supporter of the notion that a username should follow you around. A unique identifier for all your internet travels. I feel like that's one way to force the internet to mature. So even though it's fictitious, I guess I appreciate how most people just assume it's my real name, so I can both seem more credible AND still be comfortably anonymous.
 
Walter Bennett is the name of a character model for one of the scientists from the original Half-Life.

Back in 2000 or so, a funny little blog named Walter's World chronicled the diary entries and misadventures of Walter. The writer's personality and the character's stuffy humor really jibed with me at the time, so I adopted the moniker Walter Bennet on various internet places. It stuck.

I'm a big supporter of the notion that a username should follow you around. A unique identifier for all your internet travels. I feel like that's one way to force the internet to mature. So even though it's fictitious, I guess I appreciate how most people just assume it's my real name, so I can both seem more credible AND still be comfortably anonymous.

I had assumed it was your real name at first too :ganishka: It has a catchy ring to it :)

The other senior members have interesting usernames too. @Aazealh, @puella, @Grail, @Gobolatula. Share! Share!
 
Ha. Mine is way back from my AOL dial up days. I thought it would be edgy to call myself Project 2501 from Ghost in the Shell (because...the internet...get it?) Project 2501 was already taken (shocker), so Proj2501 it was. I've used it for damn near everything until this day. Back when online gaming and headsets were a thing for me, everyone called me 'Pro J' or 'Projsh', which, whatever.
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
The other senior members have interesting usernames too. Share! Share!
I don't think I had any special meaning in mind when I put in my username many years ago, but I grew up a big Monty Python Fan, so I probably was thinking of the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" when I wrote it, just because it was a short and snappy-sounding word. I've also got Cardinal Fang from the Spanish Inquisition sketch in my profile picture, so there's a consistent theme. :serpico:

Like you guys, Grail is a name I went on to use for most of my handles online whenever possible, though because "Grail" is usually taken I just use "Grailytoast." Because everybody likes toast? I don't even remember! :ganishka:
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
In 2000 I got into an online game called EverQuest. I felt that the previous pseudonym I had been using online wasn't suited for it, and so one day at work I spent part of the afternoon trying to conjure up a new one. I wanted something original and unique that felt "fantasy" and would be easy to pronounce in English, but that could also be used in other settings, like a forum or a Sci-Fi game, without seeming out of place. Like Walter said, I wanted a single identity for all my online dealings. "Aazealh" is what I came up with.

I wonder if I might not also have had in mind that a double A at the beginning could be advantageous if names were listed in alphabetical order, but honestly it's been too long for me to remember with any certainty. Either way, all those years later I still quite like the name. :shrug:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
I was wondering about what everyone's username meant or if there's a story behind it (except @Griffith. I know Miura stole that name from you!)
Need @Griffith to explain...

griffith-park-observatory-dome-picture-id505953553


My name comes from the famous Griffith Park and Observatory in Los Angeles, bequeathed, funded and named after industrialist Griffith J. Griffith (it's true, look him up =), and for short I go by Griff in honor of Al Bundy's co-worker Griff from seasons 9 through 11 of Married with Children (a picture of Griff is even my avatar on Skype as the Skullkast crew can attest).

images


The more you know! :griffnotevil:
 
Leave it to Griff to completely pull the rug from under us. Well played, sir :ganishka:

Great responses so far. It's easy to forget sometimes when engaging in internet platforms that the person on the other side is, well, a person, with a story and everything. Reading these posts makes me feel I know you all a little bit better.

Wish you all continued good health and prosperity :guts:
 
Last edited:

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
My username started on EverQuest, as well. I couldn’t think of what to call my character, so my friends suggested Rombaaaad, because my martial arts instructor at the time called me that. He was Korean-American, so him using a faux accent when calling me by my last name (Lombard) didn’t seem inappropriate. He would also draw the last part of my name out, usually before subjecting me to some sort of horrendous exercise.

I modified it to “Rhombaad,” just to make it look a little more sci-fi or fantasy-like for the setting.

Over the years, people have mainly been pronouncing it Rhom Bad, like Strong Bad, which I actually like a lot better. I feel the way it was originally pronounced could be viewed as offensive by some, so I’m much more comfortable being a bad sort of Rhom, whatever that means. :void:
 
It was my first ever "online name" and I came up with it when playing an old MMORPG (More Club Penguin-like) game called "Webosaurs". It lasted from 2009 to 2012 and I spent a couple hours looking up what it was called. Turns out it wasn't too popular :ganishka:.

The name itself isn't anything special, it comes from the word "Kerato" meaning "Horn" in greek cause my favorite dinosaur and the one I used in the game was the triceratops.

So there you go, while the great roar of the astral world happened in the manga, I was playing a Club Penguin clone with dinosaurs on my dad's computer :void:
 

jackson_hurley

even the horses are cut in half!
My comes from one of my first character I've created in a story I've developped in early 00. The story was call Hell of Jackson Hurley. A man that has a violent nightmare and wakes up finding his girlfriend dead next to him with a fork stuck in her chest.

The mystery begins there and he gets on a weird and dangerous quest to find out what happened. This story started as a comic book and then I scrapped it and did a remake in novella format mixed with a whole bunch of other stories involving a big set of characters.

Berserk episodes system inspired to count my chapters in a similar way.

I never got to finish the whole story but the first part is done.

Afterwards I created another comic book from this universe but this time its in the astral/dream world. Its called Triangle\Carré and I'm still working on it. Very absurd scifi/fantasy with a tiny dip of horror stuff.

So there it is, the origin of Jackson_Hurley.
 

puella

Berserk forever
A long time ago, a friend of mine asked me to create a brand name for a furniture company she had been working for. Their target was young women who were preparing for marriage.
At that time, I had vague memories of a Latin class I took in university, where I only attended a few times for a year. :iva:
So I chose "puella" which can mean "young or pretty woman" and "beloved one" in Latin. It was easy to pronounce and to remember, I thought.
I gave her several names with the word. The company chose it. I even received a little bit of money for it. :farnese:
Years later, I heard the brand didn't exist anymore, so I just took it as my ID.
 
In high school, i was the only male student in a Literature gifted class. I felt really lonely and struggled to fit in at the time. One day, my teacher gave a book as a present because she saw how sad and lonely i am. That book is "Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier", written by a French novelist, Patrick Modiano. I was soon fell in love with Modiano and his novels, and that's why my username is "Modianesque". :iva:
 
I liked the first 3 albums of an old school death metal band called Incantation a lot (and still do, including their early demos). And at the time of starting this account, I couldn't really think of a user name to come up with. I may have watched the band live for the first time a few weeks before joining, so they were fresh in my mind. But, I went a different route - a different name for a different message board (is what I thought at the time) and now, I wish it were the opposite :farnese: - look at you guys, so mature and waaay ahead in your thinking process. The only reason I can think of as to why the N in my name is capitalized is to fit a very 'band logo' aesthetic.

Unfortunately, my name isn't unique, because I think I was asked if I was the same user who went by IsolatioN. And gaaah, I admit now that my name is also too long :magni:!
 
I came up with this username years ago, by combining ''Guts'' from Berserk (who would've guessed) with ''likes Gyoza'' because I also love both Dorohedoro and Gyoza.

Ever since then people have been calling me Guts on the internet and some friends use it as a nickname for me in real life sometimes and that's why I've been sticking with it. (I somehow feel super great and honored even to this day, hearing people use ''Guts'' as a nickname for me hahaha :guts:)
 

Kompozinaut

Sylph Sword
I've had a number of names on the sub over the years, but my final handle (which I've adopted on most other parts of the internet), Kompozinaut, is a portmanteau of "kompositor", the Russian transliteration of the word "composer", and the suffix "-naut", referencing exploration. I have two degrees in music composition and a deep interest in Soviet era Western Art Music/History, so my handle reflects that. Even if I don't do much with either these days.
 

Dar_Klink

Last Guardian when? - CyberKlink 20XX before dying
When I was younger I went by Darklink286 which I'm sure you can guess the origin of the first part lol, the 286 was a number that my friend, his brothers, and others in our friend group decided to put on our names to differentiate them from others using semi-common user names.

Years after making that screenname that same friend's older brother was watching me spell it out in some game I was playing at their house and said "What does Dar Klink mean??" and I started using that instead because I wanted something more unique than "edgy zelda name" that 11 year old me came up with. I used my orignal for a bit here and then updated it to Dar Klink later so some of the members I talked to back in that time will still call me Link or Linky.

I use another name elsewhere that is unrelated to the previous ones so I'm bad at being consistent haha.
 
Top Bottom