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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[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)
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[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I read a fantastic book where there was the count Valmond or something.

Best name ever, never taken on forums and such, always free!

Til I learned it was de Valmont, not Valmond 🙃 but here I am!

Funnily it's usually pre-used om platforms nowadays.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hahaha Valmont is a small local grocery chain here.

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[–] kubok@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

My username is called after my first home brewed beer. It's a portmanteau of a slur used for people of my city and the type of beer I brewed that day.

[–] fiendishplan@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

A fiend told me I'd make a good scooby-doo villain and it wasn't taken by anyone else.

[–] Canopyflyer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Former skydiver.

Performed a lot of Demonstration jumps into everything from airports, race tracks, professional sports stadiums, high school sports stadiums, golf courses, and a few other places that required skill and knowledge to land in safely.

Also, spent a lot of time teaching canopy skills to up and coming jumpers.

[–] Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago
[–] earphone843@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago

I have my email service generate an alias and I use that as my username. I delete my account every few months and make a new one on a different instance.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

My nickname was originally "Stoy On" but over time it got shortend to "Stoy".

"Stoy On" comes from a small Swedish comedy film by "Galenskaparna och After Shave", a fantastic group of theatre actors who has had a very long and successfull carreer of comedy theatre, television and film. They specialized in musicals, with plenty of amazing wordplay and some fantastic songs.

Anyway, the film I am talking about this time is the TV film "The Castle Tour", the summary of it is that a group of Swedish tourists are going on a tour of a castle in Sweden, the guide has them confused with an English tour, and the joke is that the guide just speaks a nonsense language.

Now, one of the nonsense pharses the guide used was "Stoy on!", which is meant to mean "Se upp!" in Swedish, and that experssion has two meanings in Sweden, the normal one "Look out!", and the litteral one "Look up!"

At the same time I was getting annoyed at not having a standard nickname online and when gaming.

And since I thought it was fun to have a nickname that meant "Look out!" in some ways, and I liked the sound of it, I adopted "Stoy On" as my standard nickname, and since it got shortend I mainly go by "Stoy" online, or, if it is taken, "Stoy On".

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's norwegian shorthand/slang for "No you" (nei du), in the context of for example "Oh no you don't!". A friend of mine had (for unknown reasons) that as his MSN-status for years before his accidental death, and it kind of stuck in the back of my mind. It popped up when I was registering a lemmy account.

This is my 3rd account:
I forgot the password of neidu. Plus it was on .ml before I learned the implications of .ml so no real loss.
neidu2 was on a good instance. The only downside was that people kept assuming I was dutch. Not too bad, as I've been called worse things, but it is more useful for me to mod from sh.itjust.works instead.

For the record: only the accounts mentioned here are mine. Any other variations that may or may not fit my schema are to be treated as someone else. The ones I interact with regularly know this and have other methods for verifying my identity, so don't bother trying to become a mod through setting up neidu4+.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Breakfast the day I made my account

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I misspelt it back in yahoo chat days (yea, that was a while ago) and stuck with it because it is unique enough that no one else would accidentally grab it.

[–] HarvesterOfEyes@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

Because I always wanted to have my own theme song.

But really, I browsed through my music collection by alphabetical order and it sounded cool. Blue Öyster Cult always delivers, even with the title of their songs.

mine is just my normal name given to me in usual earth custom with my parental units assigning me one and another indicating my placement in a lineage. So boring and typical of the species. I mean our species.

[–] Tower@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago

I'm 6'4" / 193cm, so I'm taller than most.

[–] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago

It's a permutation of a permutation of a pseudo random username.

[–] spittingimage@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

As a bookish child, I made weekly trips to the library. To get to the kids section I had to pass the large print shelf, and there was one book that was always there: The Spitting Image. The gargoyle on the cover scared me! But when I finally looked him straight in the eye I found that he was trying to look furious, but came across as a little goofy. That's the way I imagine myself, too.

[–] Lennnny@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

My name is Helen. I hated that there were no good nicknames for it (ugh, Helly...) but I love my name. Mentioned this to a friend who was like "you could use other parts of the name for a nickname..." and suggested Lenny. As a woman on the internet, having a gender ambiguous username is very beneficial, so I adopted it, and I absolutely love it. I added extra ns because then it'd look like bad kerning Lemmy.

[–] ladytaters@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

When I was younger, I was crazy about Idaho and wanted to move there. One of my old nicknames was Lil Miss Potatoes. Now I'm a grown ass woman, so I'm Lady Taters. People tend to think it's a nickname related to my chest though.

[–] dumbass@leminal.space 5 points 1 week ago

I dunno, but people sure love calling me it all the time.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

It sounds cute.

[–] stsquad@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Old demo crew I formed with school friends when I was a teenager.

[–] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I'm a man that likes neon lights.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I just wanted something short and reasonably pronounceable, as that's easier to remember.

In the past, I've used a FIPS-181 pronounceable password generator to generate pronounceable usernames that don't collide with existing usernames. But since the Threadiverse is still young, plus each new instance has its own username space, it's practical to have a very short username.

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[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 4 points 1 week ago

it's better than what I had before

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

I can be a bit melodramatic and sassy, also like making music and looking good. Long-time fan miku fan too.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Mine’s a music joke and a reference to a line from the song “Shiny” from Moana.

Though if my great grandfather was a god it was of strawberries which is nice. He’d grow plants and ship them to gardeners all over the east coast

[–] fahfahfahfah@lemmy.billiam.net 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Was supposed to be the thing the kid says in the “pork chop sandwiches” Gi Joe spoof, but everyone seems to think it’s a reference to Jeff Dunham

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[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My username is a reference to the Wug test, specifically this question: "This is a man who knows how to gling. Yesterday he glanged. Tomorrow he will _____."

My irl nickname is Lizard. This is the story:

I was at what was supposed to be FNM, but none of us were feeling Magic that day so we decided to play Secret Hitler, mostly because it was my fiancée's best friend's sister's birthday so she ended up picking the game.

If you haven't played Secret Hitler, at the start of the game you get a little envelope secretly telling you whether you are a Liberal, Fascist, or Hitler. Liberals want to pass liberal policies to win the game, the fascists want to pass fascist policies that give players ability to shoot dissidents and eventually get Hitler to win. The relevant thing is that Hitler and the Fascists are lizards; apparently the Liberals are normal people, but I don't know for sure since I've never played as a liberal.

Just to be clear, it's almost statistically impossible for me to have never played as a liberal. In each game I've played in, there was a total of 3 Fascists (including Hitler) and usually about a dozen Liberals. I should have been a liberal at least once by now, considering I got my nickname 2 years ago.

On this particular night, we played about a half dozen games, in which I was Hitler twice. I kept suprising them by doing well! They all know I am autistic and can't lie to save my own skin, so as the games went on they got progressively more tilted each time I was revealed to be a lizard. I was also getting frustrated because I really do not like lying!

At the start of the last game, I opened my envelope, saw a lizard, and I was just so fucking done. I snapped at the shuffler, "Are you even shuffling these cards?" and threw my envelope at him. He responded "Well, now I need to reshuffle. And for that you shall die!" and started chasing me around with the Nerf gun we had been using to shoot dissidents. Eventually he cornered me with me cowering and covering my face with my hands, and with a shout of "Die, Lizard!" he shot the gun.

I somehow caught the bullet in between my hands with my eyes closed! And that's why my name is Lizard.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago

I can remember the Ace part of AceFuzzLord very well. Comes from me always using Ace whenever a game requires a profile name or a 3 letter initial.

The Fuzz Lord part I don't remember really at all, but I assume the Lord part comes from the fact I think pretty highly of myself despite the fact I'm a nobody.

Oh, and do y'all see AceFuzzLord or do y'all see Dizzy Devil Ducky? I have no idea who sees either. I see Ace and I've had other people see DDD. Either way, DDD comes from the fact that he's my favorite Tiny Toons character.

[–] ClipperDefiance@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Clipper Defiance was a Boeing 707 operated by Pan Am. Its main claim to fame was when on February 7th, 1964 it brought The Beatles to America for the first time.

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago

I once created a character in a story when I was a child about a Jack Green from the planet Æarth, and named an account on a popular site accordingly as a similarly young person, as I lacked nominative creativity, evidently. People kept getting confused between Æarth and Earth so I just changed it to Earth for future accounts.

[–] EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Quote from Fight Club

[–] jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Means potato / lame

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 1 week ago

It is kind of descriptive...

[–] Nikls94@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

An ex drinking buddy was drunk and high as F and would butcher the name of several people. I couldn’t let this one die.

water, metal, pressure and faith.

leaky showers and prayers.

[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I got named Bizzle in like 2008 because my real name wasn't cool enough, it just stuck

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[–] Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago

Around the time I first started using this username about 7 or so years ago, I was playing through the Megaman Zero games, that take place approximately 100 years after the events of Megaman X, which take place during "year 21xx". So 'Zero22xx' specifically references the version of Zero from the Megaman Zero games.

On top of that, I also just thought it was a cool mix of letters and numbers that can look pretty random if you don't know the games, or if I'm not using a profile pic.

The only annoying thing is that at some point around the time I created this username, I started seeing an anime character called 'ZeroTwo' around. So I guess it could be mistaken that I'm referencing that too.

[–] ethaver@kbin.earth 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] TheKracken@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Found a Kraken in Ultima Online. Thought it was rad and didn't know how to spell it as an 11 year old.

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[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I believe it's self explanatory.

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[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

HUM - The Scientists

Keep this benzine ring around your finger, and think of me when everything you wanted starts to end

The song is one of my favorites. About a couple scientists, probably in a relationship, testing drugs

With HUM, you never can really tell what they are talking about but it's always pretty poetry and awesome music. With a good imagination.

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[–] LGTM@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Engineers left it on my PRs before waiting several months to merge them :)

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