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

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

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[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I believe it's self explanatory.

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[–] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I'm a man that likes neon lights.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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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[–] sleepmode@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I zonk out really fast. Sometimes mid-sentence.

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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months 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

[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 4 points 2 months ago

it's better than what I had before

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

Resol - can mean a number of different things. It's the first 5 letters of the word "resolution". It's also the word "loser" spelled backwards. It's two notes on a keyboard (D and G in Anglo-Saxon music notation). And it just looks and sounds cool in my opinion.

van - the Dutch word meaning "of" or "from". Note that I am not referring to actual vans (the German equivalent being "von", which also appears in a lot of names). Also I prefer spelling that word completely in lowercase.

Lemmy - isn't it obvious? It's this wonderful website.

Put them together, and you get "Resol van Lemmy". It sounds pretty nice, don't you think? Especially since I really hate my real name.

[–] leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl 4 points 2 months ago

water, metal, pressure and faith.

leaky showers and prayers.

[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago
[–] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.

[–] WatDabney@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago

Wat Dabney is a minor character in Terry Gilliam's first non-Python movie, Jabberwocky.

The protagonist, Dennis (Michael Palin) goes to the city to make his fortune as a cooper. One of the first people he meets there is a legendary cooper named Wat Dabney ("the inventor of the inverted firkin") who's been reduced to begging because he's not a member of the guild that controls the trade.

I first adopted the name on IMDb, back in the late 90s, but retired it when IMDb shut down their general interest forums, and didn't use it on Reddit. I revived it for Lemmy.

[–] darreninthenet@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago

My name's Darren. Here I am in the 'net.

[–] sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

It's a reference to a Simpsons episode, where Bart writes "nobody likes a sunburn slapper" on the blackboard in the opening.

[–] YourAvgMortal@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I love the phrase “your average Joe”, but it doesn’t translate very well, or I couldn’t think of a translation quickly enough (English isn’t my first language), so when I was talking with my friends one day, I translated it as “your average mortal”, and I liked it

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[–] pappabosley@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

A few years after high school I joined the stage crew for a musical theatre group some friends started. At a performance after party, I was looking after some of the younger cast who had a few too many: one of them decided I was like Bosley to their Charlie's angels; the other felt I was looking after them in a fatherly way - so they combined it, and that became their nickname for me. Also, the nickname my siblings had given me, NoPatchGlandBoySleepyTheIronDeficientBrother was just too long.

[–] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I was playing some crappy F2P MMO (Perfect World, maybe?) and I made a warrior of some werewolf race. Just played with random wolf-related combinations and settled on this. Quit after two days and the username carried on for probably 15 years now.

I don't even really know all that much about Stalin. I just pulled it out of my ass.

[–] Infrapink@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

I read it in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books

[–] AceQuorthon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm a huge fan of Bathory, so I just combined Quorthon with his previous stage name, Ace.

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[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 3 points 2 months ago

It's from valarin (Tolkien's language of the Valar)

https://glaemscrafu.jrrvf.com/english/motsvalarins.html

Akasan is 'he says'

-z suffix is a person's name

So it's basically 'Teller' (I'd say storyteller) in valarin.

The 'h' was supposed to help in pronunciation, it only mildly does, I find

[–] workerONE@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I think I picked it when registering with Sharky Forums back in like 2000, it just means a wage labor worker.

[–] legopika@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 months ago

I liked Legos and I liked Pikachu at the time(I was 11 or so? Trying to make a Minecraft account lol)

I don't think I'll be able to use this name for anything commercial if I wanted to do that...

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

The Reddit API debacle that killed third party apps.

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 3 points 2 months ago

Wishful thinking

[–] spacemanspiffy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Calvin and Hobbes. I added a 'y' to the end because I could.

[–] fakir@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

It means bare, naked, possession-less.

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

School nickname

In Portuguese "zero hora" is the midnight shift, people started making jokes when I slept in class and the name got stuck.

[–] zippythezigzag@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

The way I drove and the papers I used for rolling joints back when I was a teenager

[–] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 3 points 2 months ago

Tenno, wake up. It's time to put on the silly norg fish mask from cetus and make it look good.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

Just an old meme.

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 3 points 2 months ago

I couldn't think of a better one, and just shortened my full name.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago

I had a job doing QA where I had to create user accounts. Some Guy was one of the three that I created every day.

[–] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

My page name, ShinigamiOokamiRyuu, is an amalgamation of different anime characters from anime whose characters I have cosplayed as.

My nickname (the thing that says "Call me Lenny/Leni") is based on one of my nickname preferences. I have quite a few, my birth name being Valentina, which allows for a lot of nicknames (including Leni, which is one of the shorthands for Valentina, though Tina is the most popular) that get changed around depending on who I communicate with.

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago

I am terrible at names

The name i used before was "youtuber", which i "came up with" when creating my youtube account

This is the first name that wasnt already taken in Minecraft so i kept it

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

Depending on what your lemmy app/ui shows, it's either a Guild Navigator or a Facedancer.

[–] BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

I‘m doing a 6-2 job in finances on autopilot while mentally at another place to not be drained when I follow my hobbies after work

[–] Nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 months ago

i like the swapnote girl so i borrowed her name

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

CB radio user names are called handles. One of my nicknames is The Vandal. I think Subterranean Homesick Blues is one of Dylan's best. Violà.

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