The etymology of your alias.

[Captain M4d]

I just wrote a long post on my blog about the origin of mine, so I was just wondering about everyone else. The history, the variations, the new names, etc. Why are you called 'so-and-so' here on HL2.net?

Here's my answer:

...

Take my alias for instance: 'Captain M4d.' This name is at least four or five years old, and I still use it for most of my online gaming, despite the minor use of '1337speak.' Actually, I just changed it to 'Captain Mad,' because I got tired of teammates calling me out, pronouncing 'M4d' 'M-4-D' instead of 'mad.' Otherwise, I might have kept it the way it was--though, I'm probably wrong. I'm more than happy to get rid of the small bit of '1337' baggage created so many years ago.


But I was eager to use '1337' characters for my first alias those many years ago.


It was 2002, and I was a seventh-grader in middle school. If you haven't caught on, my name is Dylan, and some of my friends started calling me 'Dylan Farnum' after that episode in "Doug" where Doug gets accused of copying the wardrobe of famous fashion designer, Dylan Farnum. Of course, Doug has always been wearing the same boring, green sweater vest and khaki shorts, but alas, the star power of Dylan Farnum wipes the memories of Doug's friends blank.


So for a few years, I was known as 'Dylan Farnum,' to some of my friends, some of them being my gamer buddies.


When I picked up up Counter-Strike at the ripe age of 12, my original alias was 'th3.mustach3man.' I assigned this name to myself, because I had already grown a fairly visible amount of peach fuzz above my upper lip (which granted me full 'geek' status early on, deeming me 'un-datable' by many chicks I had crushes on).


So I had this alias for a little while, and I can't recall when it exactly happen, but sometime between when I was 12 and 13, I changed my alias to 'm4d.f4rnum,' combining the nickname my friends assigned me and the coolness of '1337speak' at the time. I don't know why I put 'm4d' in the front--maybe I thought myself as a mad lunatic; I certainly wasn't angry.


I kept this alias for a long time, from Counter-Strike to Day of Defeat to Call of Duty. It was my registered screen-name on the BattleLAN.com forums (God rest its soul) and the G4TV.com forums (God DAMN it soul).
As I entered high school, I slowly transitioned between my main groups of friend, and I was tired of being called 'Dylan Farnum,' so it was time to get rid of the 'f4rnum.' Here's another decision that is beyond me now. I decided to add 'Captain' to my alias and keep the 'm4d.' I supposed I kept 'm4d' for continuity purposes, so forum members of BattleLAN and G4TV could tell who I was.


So there I was: a new man--kinda. My new alias was 'Captain M4d,' and I felt older, more mature and more skilled as a gamer. I proved myself to be a skilled player--after a long hiatus, I could log-in to Counter-Strike and maintain a satisfactory kill-to-death ratio. And the skills were transferable to other online games that I loved to play.
Once Half-Life 2 came out, I became, perhaps, one of the biggest Valve 'fanboys' in Maine or New England. I played the game at exactly 4:00am when it came out (despite a full school day and band concert later ahead). I joined the AllGames.com forum in an exodus move from G4TV after it's shit-merger with TechTV (which devoured it whole and left nothing except for a wounded Kevin Rose), and I also joined Halflife2.net, which I still post on regularly.


The rest, they say, is history.


I've started to take some steps to adopt a completely new alias: 'SubEngy,' the nickname for this blog.


The etymology for that is quite simple and kind of stupid. I've been a fan of Team Fortress 2 for a while, and when I started thinking of names for a gaming/geek culture blog, I had been playing as an Engineer who had a Sentry Gun installed underwater. I don't know what got into my head, but for some reason I thought 'subterranean' meant underwater. You can make fun of me if you want. I suffer from this problem mainly when I talk, so this was a rare incident where I had a wrong idea for a while, and by the time I registered 'The Subterranean Engineer' for Wordpress, it was too late.


Stephanie, my fiance, told me that subterranean meant 'underneath the Earth.' Well, I can think of a few instances of where an Engineer might be under the Earth. Gravel Pit, anyone?


....

 

[Dog--]

I was 13 at this site and didn't know how to register.. It took me 3 tries (Dog, Dog-, and I finally got it right with Dog--).

It stuck.

 

[morgs]

Well I can't give as good an explanation as that, but my name symbolizes who I am, someone who prefers to be alone rather than socializing (most of the time) Linked with my favorite animal, the wolf.

The wolf also has meaning because I am very close to my pack (family).

 

[Robbo]

I wish I has a story like that.
My name is Robert but it's annoying to say so I use Robbo.

I use kobey57 for my email address because in primary school I had one of those online pets that was called kobey (no idea why). When I was thinking of a hotmail email I just used that but had to put the 57 on the end because it wasn't available and has embarrassed me since (especially when giving out my email for work).

 

[Dog--]

I wish I has a story like that.
My name is Robert but it's annoying to say so I use Robbo.

I use kobey57 for my email address because in primary school I had one of those online pets that was called kobey (no idea why). When I was thinking of a hotmail email I just used that but had to put the 57 on the end because it wasn't available and has embarrassed me since (especially when giving out my email for work).

Mine was made when I was 7 years old.

Bloodrezo@


Don't feel bad.

 

[VirusType2]

I liked the idea of two words, it's more of a handle (or title) than a name. Also I always hated when GUIs disallow an uppercase character in the middle of a string. So the GUI would write it Virustype2. Also hated ones that don't allow spaces... so I felt like I was getting over when I capitalized the T.

There is much more to the story, but I've told it twice since I've been here.

 

[15357]

I dunno what I was thinking when I made my name. Lambda on numpad, eh?


They were prolly random numbers I punched in to register, because I didn't plan on staying long. Now, I'm a month away from my 5th anniversary of joining this site. :E


Of course, it makes for a hard pronounciation and is hard to remember, so I fully endorse the title of "Numbers" that you guys have given me. <3

 

[Shyam]

Fairandbalanced was a user name one of the users used in a political forum I used to frequent. But he was anything but Fairandbalanced. Also parody of Fox News.

 

[dfc05]

I took the three first letters from a random phrase in a crappy song. Then I stuck the last two digits of my high school graduation year at the end. I highly regret this.

The sad thing is, my IM screenname is not much better. I took the title of a song, and then stuck all four digits of my high school graduation year at the end. 5 years from now, anyone who sees my screenname who doesn't know me would think I'm 9 years old.

 

[[Dragoon]]

Took mine from the Starcraft unit maybe 6-7 years ago. I can't recall why I added the brackets here, name might have been taken.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I like Ace Combat, someday wish to be a fighter pilot, and my favorite plane is the F-14 Tomcat. Woo.

I could tell the origin of another of my handles[Kalue] which I use for RPGs, but I'm on a cell phone and it would take a while.

 

[Higlac]

I stole wakiwaki from a friend. Decided to get my own. Took this from Beowulf.

 

[Warped]

I love War games, used to love going to Warped tours and my mind is warped from all the drugs I took. my xbl gamertag is warpedcrakhed because my friends used to call me a crackhead and i had to abbreviate it but I love 'Warped' much more.

 

[Krynn72]

Krynn was the name of one of my Ultima Online friends. Liked the name and stole it. Later I found out where he got it from, which was from some shitty Dungeons and Dragons book series or something. The name of the planet was Krynn I think. Anyways, I read the first book in the series when I found out, and it was lame.

The number is more difficult to remember. I think when I tried registering the name for the first time on some other forum or website, it was taken so I had to come up with a number. Guess 72 were the two numbers I hit. Thus, Krynn72 was made.

My email address is a little more logical. [email protected]. I got halflife (hl) in 1999 (99) and Freeman (Freeman) was the last name of the player's character. And since Halflife was the best game I had ever played at that time, it was the first thing that came to mind when I registered my first real email address at hotmail.

 

[Danimal]

Yogurt.

Yeah.

 

[YROC]

My name is from my Xbox Live gamertag, which I made three years ago-ish. I was on my friend's console, he told me to make a name. I didn't plan on keeping the name, it was just for a game or two. Not too long after that, I got my own console and transferred the name, for reasons unknown. The "X"s at the beginning and end are because "Hokey Pokey" without them have been taken. In IRC and just about everywhere else, I go by "Hokey". If I could change my name now, i'd make it normal Hokey.

 

[Sparta]

In 2002 I listened to Sparta's album "Wiretap Scars" a bit and really liked it. Still a pretty good album.

I started using Sparta as a name for DoD 1.3 and when I joined here it stuck.

Unfortunately, in 2007, people began thinking I just really liked the film/graphic novel "300". That was annoying. Now most people have forgotten about that shitty film or have stopped talking about it and no longer associate my name with that crap.

 

[Ravioli]

Some swedish comedy TV show were comedians pretend to be stupid politicians. One of them were asked a very serious and complicated question in which he responded "RAVIOLI" and made me laugh hard.

 

[Dynasty]

Started getting into pro paintball in around...2003 or 4. Back then, San Diego Dynasty were to paintball what Manchester United were to Football. Arguably the best team around basically.

So I had gone from Synergy, Pureball and..err..Eranikus and Anathema and started using Dynasty as my online alias for Counter Strike.

Then WoW came along and I got into that a few months after its release. Dynasty became my name on the server.

Had that for just over 4 years. Nicknames like Dyn and Dyna became the norm among my guild (woot go Azeroths Fury!)

And then ironically about a month before I quit WoW for good, like trying to get off crack or something, I got an email from Blizzard saying that my name wasnt in line with their rules or whatever, and I was forced to change it, until I wrote a rather pissed off email back to them saying that there were almost 1000 other Dynasty's in the armoury and that it was only fair that they forced them all to change their names as well.

A GM contacted me in-game and I put my argument forward again, with about a minute he told me to logout and I had my name restored.

This was all around the time I joined HL2.net so...Dynasty it was.

[edit] Woah my post count is seriously lacking considering my join date.

 

[Zephos]

 

[Pax]

I am the embodiment of peace and love upon others.

Ask anyone.

 

[Pulse]

I'm what keeps you ticking. Also I thought it looked pretty sleek and it was the name of a song by the Map Capsule Markets, who are bat shit insane, so it was a keeper.

 

[Raziaar]

Played Soul Reaver long time ago... loved the game, loved the name Raziel, and so I twisted it into Raziaar.

 

[Paulaner]

My first name and the first letter of my surname. I wish I had been more imaginative, but now it's stuck.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Because i like back to the future.
/crowd is in awe

If i had my time again i would be INTERNET-VON-OWNAGESTEIN (or ZOMBIe-STEIN-VON-CHICKENSCHNITZELBURGER)

 

[Eejit]

http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/eejit


Prior to that I used "Dexter", after the cartoon character. A couple of rl friends of mine I played with were using "Johnny Bravo" and "Catdog".

 

[Wanted Bob]

Way back when, my friends and I used to make films using lego. Was one of the things I look back most fondly on in my childhood, and Wanted Bob was the name of one of the characters.

I admit now it looks really juvenile, but I've just instinctively used it for a lot of things (If there was some way of renaming my Windows Live address I would do it).

 

[Tyguy]

it was the last breath of a dying girl i had stabbed 45 times

 

[Dekstar]

Prior to that I used "Dexter", after the amazing halflife2.net forum member.

Fixed.

Back when I as about 12, and played Neopets and Alienaa (don't judge me!) I went under the guise of Dekster, which is a shortening of my real name, Dekalopolis. Later, I tried registering my name to other places, but it turned out Dekster was taken, so I tried Dekstar and it worked. Then I noticed the awesome word-play with the star and kept it.

People think I named it after Dexter's lab. I didn't. You suck.

 

[Maestro]

I read a fanfiction piece wayyyyy back when I was still "Orb" (which is a username I came to hate quickly) and decided one of the characters' callsigns "Maestro" fit. I was still playing bass then so it worked better than it does now but I think "Maestro" sounds cool so...

Whatevah.

 

[Sloth]

To be honest, my brother was registering me a gmail account and told me I couldn't just have my name. He called me a lazy shit, thus the Sloth. Stuck with me ever since.

 

[kupocake]

When you're first exposed to a multiplayer shooter and you have to pick a name quick you do one of two things. You come up with a retarded alias based on a word or term you think is cool, or you sit there foaming at the mouth thinking 'Duuhhh. I would could think it be funny if when people shoot me they see the name of someone that could actually get killed!'. I was in the later category, the person I inexplicably had it in for was Prince (I don't and have never known the first thing about the guy, beyond his silly name). Or rather, 'The artist formerly known as Prince'.

In true Prince style, that got shortened to 'The Artist' and then got nerded sidewise into 'the_artist' (the underscore was obligatory for some reason). Too late, I realised that people weren't getting the whole 'huhuh I'm shooting that squeaky guy what ain't Michael Jackson' thing, and that it probably came across more as a piece of ultra-pretentious cock runoff. So what's the 100% full-proof way of making yourself a much more cuddly character in the gaming world? You miss the problem entirely and stick 'kupo' in somewhere.

So, I joined HL2.net as 'kupoartist' and remained like that for some time, trying slightly different aliases elsewhere, with nothing really sticking. Sooner or later, my dependency on cake, coupled with my growing ignorance of my ever increasing flamboyance lead me to change my name legally to Princess Alexandra Kupocake. However, this was shortened simply to 'kupocake' after it was discovered that I'd accidentally written my place of birth in the First Name field.

tl;dr: My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

 

[ktimekiller]

Ive been using ktimekiller as an online alias for probably 8+ years now.

My brother used to use timekiller as his alias, but one time, couldnt as it was taken (gasp), so he added a random letter to the front. Thus my name.

Ive also been using a different alias of Dorrus for 5+ years, but I still use ktimkiller here and there.

Also stolen from my brother ;D

 

[Absinthe]

I fad a fascination with it for a period and it was better than my previous "Monkeyblimp".

I'd probably change it now, but I can't think of anything good.

 

[Qonfused]

I've used a few different names throughout my "netlife."

I started with my first email of [email protected].

Then for awhile I used Sorcerxo, which was an abomination of sorcerer. I made this for a new account of Neopets. I remember asking my mom how to spell sorcerer and her worrying that I was interested in the dark arts or something. I was using her computer at work, too, so all of her coworkers were freaked out too. I'm awesome.

Then came Q_onfused. I sat down one day, recognizing that I needed a new, permanent name that is unique enough to make it an email without numbers and cool enough for me not to change it for awhile. "What am I?" "What word describes me?" I was around 12 at the time. The word confused popped into my head. Typed it into Yahoo mail. Name taken. Hmm. What if I add something? What can I add? Q_onfused. Oh, it looks like a face, a confused face . Q_onfused. Nice. Entered it in to Yahoo. Accepted.

I used Q_onfused for a long time, a few years at least. My Steam username is Q_onfused. After awhile, I got tired of people pronouncing it "Cue-un-fused" so I took like underscore out. I really liked the play on the face, but it wasn't worth constantly correcting people over it. This change happened in 2006, I believe. Romhair still thinks the underscore variation is better.

I really haven't considered changing it. It's so standard now. Everyone knows me as Qonfused. "Sup Q." "Hey Qonf." It's nice to have the same name over many accounts. My friends irl call me Qonf some times. There's a running joke among my friends: when someone, anyone, says "I'm confused" around one of us, we correct them and say "No Travis is Qonfused." This happens constantly, and people around learn to use other words like befuddled and perplexed. I hear stories about how people were correcting their family members over Thanksgiving break over using the word confused.

It's kinda awesome that my name has a history.

 

[Dekstar]

tl;dr: My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

lol'ed.

Then for awhile I used Sorcerxo, which was an abomination of sorcerer. I made this for a new account of Neopets. I remember asking my mom how to spell sorcerer and her worrying that I was interested in the dark arts or something. I was using her computer at work, too, so all of her coworkers were freaked out too. I'm awesome.

I made this for a new account of Neopets.

account of Neopets.

Neopets.

also lol'ed.

 

[CyberPitz]

Fathers nickname around the internet was "Pitz", so I decided it would be fitting to take it and form it to myself.

He got the name because that's how people pronounced the first portion of our last name...which they obviously always said it wrong.

 

[Stigmata]

**** YES.

Also, someone told me "stigmata" was a cool disease in Counter-Strike. Thus, a legend was born.

 

[kineaesth]

And expansion of Kinæsthetic, basically.

It rhymes, it looks nice, it has a nice meter, it has an æ. It abbreviates well.

 

[Lucid]

My first internet handle that I used when I was about 6 or 7 was Flippo, I took the name from some nifty little flash toy on a website called YukYuk.
I used the name in nearly everything including a game I played for 5 ****ing years called Activeworlds, which was essentially the Second Life of the 90s, but so much better. It was also the first game I ever paid a monthly fee for.(well, my parents paid it.)

After all of the friends I made on the game slowly started to disappear I began to drift away from the game and had my parents stop paying for it.
At some point in time when I was 7 or 8, I was reading a National Geographic article on something about snails and became fascinated by them.
I had an imagination back then so I drew up comics and such about a snail super hero with a cape and all.
Signed up for my first email account on yahoo and used sup3rsnail, the l33t speak was there because I was a dumbass in those days.

This eventually became the name I used on nearly everything I did because it was never taken, Flippo was basically a one time thing on Active Worlds and its message board so it never caught on.

Fast forward to the year 2002, I just watched Donnie Darko and was madly in love with it constantly writing about it and doodling Frank onto all of my school work papers.
I watched its credits one day and saw Lucid Assembly as a song title and thought it was the coolest and slickest sounding thing ever.
I didn't even know what the **** it meant but it stuck as my nickname for everything and then one day I decided to just shorten to xlucidx because I thought it was too long.
The x's were just because I saw so many people use x's instead of spaces for their names that it was cool.

Lately though I've been reversing the name and respelling it to be Deakul and I'm starting to use it for every new account I make now.