Question How did you get your Gaming Handle?

[MaddMann]

I think most of us here have 2 names we go by. Our actual name, and our gaming name. Example, my name is Nick, but I go by MaddMann online.

So my original handle was actually PFC MaddMann and I still use that sometimes, even though when I left the army I was an SPC. Anyway, the origin of my name is a combination of being too tired and not realizing where I was. I trained at Fort Benning GA back in 2005. Once I graduted from basic and AIT, I was still on the waiting list to go to Jump school. In this time I helped other train. One hot afternoon (not that there is any variation of temperature at Benning, it is always stupid hot) after I finished assisting at the kill house (a place for close quarters training and entry tactics) I had about 2 hours to kill until I needed to report for the next crew. During this time I grabbed my ipod, an MRE, and set off to find some shade to eat under. I went to our little mach Iraq town. It was not populated today, so I figured it was not in use. I went inside one of the building, popped in my headphones, sat on a box and started heating my food. About 10 minutes later while I am rocking out to some Guns and Roses, I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see a dude in a full bear suit (bomb suit) looking at me with as much disdain as I think he could muster. He turns on his mic and yells, "Hey PFC MAD MAN, GET OFF THE F*%KING BOMB", and the name never left me. I did change it to MaddMann later on though as it was less common it was fun to tell people to spell it with two m's, two a's, and two n's.

TLDR I sat on a bomb and got told to move.

Now lets here about your handle, or a fun story that came up with your handle. (Had a friend whos handle was Game Ranger, but squished together being gameranger I thought it was gamer anger for years)

 

[Inspireless Llama]

As a gamer I use 2 names really. This one, Inspireless Llama, and "My Name's Nobody."

This one originates from an online browsergame I used to play. Tribal Wars. At some point me and someone else decided we were going to play together and make a new account for it, but we had no inspiration at all. So we went for the name "without inspiration". Then on another server a group decided to start playing with each other, and the requirement was that everyone had "llama" in their name. So my choice was simple, I went for Inspireless Llama . We also had names there like "Llama Del Ray", "Purple Llama", "Dalai Llama" and more.

My Name's Nobody is the name I prefer using now. I go for the llama one when either Nobody is too long or I need a name without spaces (like twitch) because I don't like My_Name_Is_Nobody. or something like that.
This name I like because "My Name Is Nobody" is a movie I really enjoy. Also, when I'm feeling good and all I can be funny and have humor, just like the movie is a comedy. When I feel bad, My Name's Nobody is right because I'll feel like a nobody. So the name always works

 

[Alm]

My name is just a truncation of my first email address. Unfortunately there's no story behind it. When I joined the PC Gamer forum that was around in 2003, I used the whole line before the @, then when a mod was allowing name changes I took off everything but the first 3 letters.

I say it Al M, I know a lot of people read it as alm (like the start of almond).

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I usually just make some nonsense up on the spot.

I'm currently DonnyOddlegs on Steam after a minor sort of character from a 90's UK comedy show 'Fist of Fun'. Or I've been Slinky or derivations of that because, well, slinkies are nice. Kaamos is the Finnish name for the 24 hour darkness in winter. Lllama just kind of flowed with that (Also Jeff Minter liked Llamas)

 

[Zloth]

"Sloth" has been a nickname of mine for a long time - mostly from my mom. (Probably from my habit of staying up until 3am then sleeping until 11am. It can't possibly have anything to do with doing my chores!)

Unfortunately, between sloth popularity and possibly because of being one of the 7 deadly sins, getting the "Sloth" handle was nearly impossible - even going back as far as Air Warrior in the 2400bd modem days. I couldn't even get it on the opening day of Anarchy Online! So I pretty much gave up and started using Zloth.

P.S. Sloths are incredible critters. They can carve out a living for themselves in a jungle and still have time to sleep something like 23hrs per day! We live in an environment we pretty much made for ourselves. Yet how much sleep do you get? Can you even sustain double digits!?

 

[Sarafan]

I use two nicks: Sarafan and Elevrilnar. The first one is inspired by the Sarafan Brotherhood from the Legacy of Kain series. I love the complicated plot in this series and that's why I decided to base my gaming name on it. It was roughly 15 years ago. The second nick is just a random fantasy name. I found it very hard to pronounce by many people, so right now I'm mostly stick with Sarafan whenever it's possible.

 

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

Well my username was once GoLdEnFiSh many years ago. The inspiration came from the fact that since golden shines out then trying to mimic this by having upper and lower case letters would make it look good like graphic text art.

Plus I also had gold fish and an aquarium when I was a kid. Noticing how fish swims that gave me the idea to once create a username with a fish.

Later on I got bored of that username and created BLaZiNgSPEED. The inspiration for BLaZiNg came from GoLdEn. And SPEED in all caps would try and enforce how fast it is.

I had GoLdEnFiSh somewhere around 2004-2007 when I played Carom3D a billiards pool game actively. Later on Carom3D went bust and the online servers were shut in 2013 but by then I lost interest in this pool game as it became outdated and I had registered to Steam, Origin, Ubisoft, Youtube, etc with BLaZiNgSPEED. Almost all places across the internet I am with that username now to make it simple and easy for others to know me.

Only in LiChess.org I play with GoLdEnFLAME now, but that's because someone took my name and in fact closed their accounts with it so I had to register with a different name. Other sites where I couldn't register with full username I simply put an underscore like in GOG for example.

 

[Lord Hades]

The very early days of graphical MMORPG's had restricted words, and I had to start mine out as LrdHades. Back in 1992 many people would use "LrD" as the abbreviation for "Lord". I was playing the original Neverwinter Nights on American Online (NWN on AOL), and 1200 baud modems were all the rage. I played the lawful evil alignment, fought on an organized PVP ladder, and never lost a death match. I belonged to the "Guild of Chaos" aka as GOC back then, and was a guild officer.

Later on I went to form the Lords of the Dead (LotD) in 1995 in preparation for the Darksun Online (DSO) game, and had a good 25 year history as the guildmaster of that outfit. We crushed many servers, many worlds, and many games in our day.

 

[DXCHASE]

Ive changed mine only once. It was originally Lamar Vannoy, its not a made up name, i got it from a song by one of my favorite punk bands at the time (late 90s), the bouncing souls.

But the reason why i used it was because a group of friends of mine were pulled over on our way to a show, when they asked for id i said i had none. They asked for my name and i said "Lamar Vannoy" they actually looked it up and couldnt find it, got mad and i said i was foreign. Nothing bad happened from it, but my friends called me Lamar after that, so it just kinda stuck.

The new name now is just a twist DXChase the DX is for death and my name is chase, so yea boring and droll.

 

[Oussebon]

Misheard the word cruciform once. Found it made for a name nobody else had picked.

Fun times in various MMO raiding guilds hearing people struggle to pronounce it on Vent.

 

[Jawaka]

Its from a Frank Zappa song.

 

[I Will Haunt You]

@Sarafan Dammit! I knew that sounded familiar but I couldn't place it!


I have had lots of nicknames through my internet days going all the way back to the mid nineties.

My earliest nickname was philodox, because I was big into Werewolf: The Apocalypse player at the time and a philodox was the aspect I played the most. That lasted two or three years (I think).

Philodox gave way to drachehexe, which really should be drachenhexe (with an N) [it means dragonwitch in German], but the sites I wanted to be members with only allowed 11 letters at the time, not 12, so I dropped the N. I carried that one around for a long while, even to this day in some places, and it is my default username on Steam. I have had variations of the evil dragon theme including dracomalus.

Not too long ago I changed it to I Will Haunt You for PCG and started using it in other things as well. I chose that because I really want to make something scary for gamers to play (some day) and made it as a constant reminder. I also enjoy using other spooky alternates such as ghastly ghost and woeful wraith. I'm not all that interested in sticking to one name all the time, but I Will Haunt You has been quite comfortable for me.