How did you obtain your username? What was your very first on the internet?

[Chilari]

My very first online username was WaterfallPhoenix. I thought Phoenixes were cool (I mean, they are) and the name Phoenix had already been taken on that particular website, and I have always refused to spell things wrong deliberately so rather that call myself Feenix or whatever, I added Waterfall, for the juxtaposition. I later learned that Waterfall was my grandfather's ham radio callsign. So that's nice.

As for now, I used a name generator to pick a cool name for my first Guild Wars character, back in 2005. I liked it enough that it became my primary online name which I have used ever since.

 

[AceTheMad]

Little embarrassing, but I can take it.

My username came primarily from a Werewolf game here almost...5 years ago. I got really into the role of the madman who did nothing to solve the case...yet somehow managed to blindly guess correctly to hang the correct person every single time. I...I did terribly as a madman. I've polished writing a madman now, so it's much better.

That was a long time ago...I wonder if anyone else who participated is even still here.

 

[NBRei]

I got my username now from a nickname from online friends, the nickname was Rei. I went offline there for about 4 years and came back, and decided to change my username to NBRei. The NB stands for Novabuilt which is just something I've started to use because I liked it. Obviously, this is not my first username. I went through a couple before I came to this one, but I really like it.

 

[dreamfall887]

My name dreamfall comes from the adventure game "Dreamfall: The Longest Journey"

 

[The Stranger]

@dreamfall887 That's a good game.

I just came up with my name one day. Not sure what influenced my decision, to be honest.

The first ever name I used, at least the first I used for any length of time, was Lemuria Delacroix. lol. That was such a long time ago. I even remember setting up my first email account, hotmail, with the help of my friend in the early 2000's. First website I visited was one dedicated to vampire fiction. Had one of those old embedded chatrooms in it.

I miss the days of some random stranger entering the chatroom and asking "ASL?" and everyone posting their age, sex, and location. lol.

 

[Milennin]

My first online name was Larn, but I very quickly learned that short names are almost always already taken on anything that isn't entirely new, so I later went with Milennin instead. Both are names for OC's I made, but neither of them have made many appearances in my works, lol.

 

[Martine1979]

I loved to use Martine as a username since one of my characters that is inside my story that i wrote years ago so first name is done however, on most sites and games i also uses a last name called Lightfellow after i loved main character from Suikoden 3 used that name, so since then my name has been a mix of those two names plus sometimes my age number like i do here. ^_^;

 

[HexMozart88]

This was actually my first internet account. My account names everywhere else are usually some variant of it.

 

[lesbrarians]

My very first username was embarrasing! Starfish_of_Terror, which then became Starfishy-chan. I used those on deviantArt and Gaia back in the early aughts. I then became jabberwockyx, which I chose because I loved Alice in Wonderland the jabberwocky poem (with the X as the roman number 10, a reference to my favorite Kingdom Hearts character at the time. Also because just jabberwocky was taken). Now I'm lesbrarians, because I'm a lesbian librarian, and I think the overlap between the two makes for a great name haha.

 

[AssumedPseudonym]

　My first username online was JSDaBird, which is just my initials and a nickname I went by extensively enough that it’s still a part of my pen-on-paper signature despite me not having used that nickname for at least fifteen years. I’ve gone by a few others, mainly characters I’ve played as online, with the usual go-to being Alyksandur if a username character limit means AssumedPseudonym won’t fit. As for AssumedPseudonym itself, that came about when I needed to make a hub account on a roleplaying site to link my assorted characters to, and it just kinda… stuck. Also I usually shorten it to just ’Nym. Easier to type, easier to say, and better the last three letters than the first three. Even if the first three are often appropriate. <.< >.> <.<;

 

[Wolfhammer]

I was initially known as Silverwolf, because of the creeping white in both hair and beard. I then inherited the name Sledgehammer, for reasons I would rather not elaborate on :lol: . I then blended the two together and voila.

 

[Arctica]

Arctica is the name of my main character.

As far back as I can remember when forums were just cascading sentences, it was some variation of Sephiroth(yeah yeah..)

My actual first username when ikonboard took off was Cloud X. Kept the name for like a year before moving on another which I can't remember. Then Xenosaga came out and I turned into a big Shion fan and used her name as my new long standing user name. Still got the avatar too:

After that I would take on a ton of usernames, all references to a game I played. If custom titles are enabled, I always use The Arbiter of Time which is a reference to Chrono Cross. For about 5 years I would use Twilight Sky as a reference to Suikoden V(final rune spell of the Twilight Rune is Vermilion Sky). As of right now, I don't use any one username as foundation for identity.

 

[Nenen]

It's a silly story.
My 2nd younger brother (who's also here on the forums btw) used to call his older brothers 'Nenen' when he was little, then the sibling after did that but just to me.
So it's basically a nickname of sorts from childhood. Though I believe the first username might have went by 'Nenenguy' (Still have a few of those) I also go by LegoNenen on some sites.

Later on a small community forum, somebody mentioned that [nenen] is actually a real word in some language... And further research found it to be several...

Afterwards, I sometimes considered picking something less weird or silly sounding. But by this point I'm mostly used to it.

 

[Shuutaa]

At first I just use my real name. Then I watched Black Rock Shooter and completely obsessed to the character (BRS herself). Shuutaa is actually Shooter romanized because I thought it's not cool wandering around calling yourself Shooter. Also the shorten version of the name will be Shuu - sounds like a normal Japanese human name, not Shoo, nor Shoot - I mean what the heck are those?

If you are wondering: yes, I'm still obsessed with the character.

 

[VegaKotes]

I made it up close to uh....almost 19 20 years ago? It was a character name for a story my friends and I were making up (still kind of am to this day though my effort has gone on to other projects since.)
And I liked the name so much I use it for pretty much all of my online accounts.

 

[MarisaG]

Its my name. Used to use "fstltna" which was my license plate for "fast latina"...

 

[sirenianheart]

My very first username was SirenKristi, because I liked the sirens from greek mythology, & was a fan of Kristie the naga from Legend of Mana. Not sure why I dropped the 'e' from her name, though.

Then later on, I used the username Lunastone (KD-Lunastone on deviantart-- Lunastone was taken, so I just added my first two initials & a hyphen).

Even later, I changed it to Kriluna (one of my ocs), but that was short-lived. I did use a few other original character names on various virtual pet sites, but those were one-offs.

After that, I couldn't quite solidify a username, but it always had "Ocean's Heart" or the words "ocean" and "heart" in it (as seen in my steam name, OceanicHeartbeat). This was a reference to my original universe & the stories I'd tell about it, which at the time had been named Tales of Ocean Heart-- and later, Tales from the Ocean's Heart.

Then one day, it clicked: SirenianHeart!
It's reminiscent of both my very first username, and the ones I had been using! Ever since then, I've been using it on every site I've joined. I feel very comfy with this name!
And thus, I ended up going back to my original online nickname: Siren

 

[RachelTheSeeker]

Hoo boy. Time to dig up some ancient, personal memories. Story time, kids.

So, the earliest screenname I remember having was Celebi134. Can ya tell what game series I was obsessed with as a kid? This was on the first internet community I had ever been a part of, an old forum that an old website was connected to. That old site was called Super Mario HQ. I frequented a message board related to a webcomic there called Neglected Mario Characters. Turns out, that would become my AOL username back when.

The second screenname I used for a long time was KintarosTiger. The younger me grew up into a teen, fell in love with the Mortal Kombat series, and named herself after an OC. As it were, the boss Kintaro from MK2 was originally going to be an anthropomorphic tiger, not the multi-armed, dragon-like Shokan he wound up being. Kintaros was a tiger-boy teenager with a ninja sword, vaguely inspired by Mitsurugi in Soul Calibur 3. I had a whole picture "series" in old sketchbooks that, if given time, I could probably regurgitate a lot of.

And now, we get auto-biographical. More than the last two paragraphs.

My word kinda got flipped upside down as a fledgling adult, having graduated high school. My oldest best friend went to college. My relationship with my family steadily declined, despite being stuck in their house. I lost my religion after being a zealot in my teens, only to rise again as a pagan. I knew I wasn't straight since my teens, but realizing I wasn't even cis as an early twenty-something was a doozy. I didn't know how to handle things, but I think I knew this couldn't last forever.

In needing a new name to match a new identity, I lifted it off of an OC I created at the time. One of my first big RPG Maker ideas was a fantasy retelling of The Lion King. My keyfabe, my self-insert, my favorite OC, my beloved Raziya... wasn't always named Raziya. Back when I created her, she wasn't a martial-artsy pyromancer either. She was a lot more roguish. She was called Rachel the Ravenous in her earliest incarnations. I still have the dA picture as proof.

If I was to find my truth, I needed to search for it, no matter where it led. I wanted to be, and in many ways still am, a "spiritual seeker" on the winding road of self-discovery. Trying to understand a world that became more and more muddy, both as I delved and as things progressed by itself. Trying to find and truly grasp my place in it all, swept up in its currents or acting regardless of it all.

...so who else could I be today, but Rachel The Seeker?

 

[ShiraCheshire]

My first username was Karibam. Keep in mind I was pretty young when I came up with that one, was for my Neopets account hahaha. Kari was from the English dub of Digimon season 1, bam was short for Black Agumon (my favorite fighter in the Digimon Rumble Arena 2 game.) So yeah, pretty silly.

When I got tired of that, it became HikariOkami. Used that on my Deviantart and Youtube. That was my "Everything Japanese!" phrase, I still cringe a little. Just mashed together Light + Wolf because it was also my "Wow wolves are just the coolest" phase.

Finally I landed on ShiraCheshire almost by chance. I was cringing pretty hard at HikariOkami at that point, but I had no idea what I wanted to go by next. I joined the Nuzlocke forums around that time, and had completely on a whim named the character in my nuzlocke Shira, so I named my account that. Just Shira was obviously taken, so I tossed Cheshire on at the end since I love Alice in Wonderland.

I used ShiraCheshire on another forum around that time, where I made a ton of friends. After that, all my best friends were calling me Shira, so I just stuck with it! I've been ShiraCheshire for a long time now.

 

[Frostorm]

There's not really a deep story behind my username(s), but here it goes... My very earliest username (not on this forum) was "Infercicle". It's a portmanteau of "Inferno" & "Icicle" because I was like 12yo and crazy about duality and stuff at the time, lol. You can still Google "Infercicle" and you'll find my old SimCity4 creations (a school specifically). I don't even remember how I made that all those years ago. Apparently, my 3D modeling skills were far better back then than they are now...

My next username would be "Staf00", which I created sometime in high school. It's basically just "STFU" but spelled how it sounds. Again, I was just an immature teenager and since my real name starts w/ "Sta...", I went with it. I still have a few accounts using that name, here and there.

Lastly, my current username "Frostorm" is a portmanteau of "Frost" & "Storm". If you can't tell, my favorite element combo went from being Fire & Ice to being Ice & Lightning. I first used this name on my 1st World of Warcraft character back in 2004. It was an Orc Shaman, specifically. I've continued to use this name ever since for most of my accounts. For more professional situations, I spell it backward, which gives me "Mr.Otsorf". Though that's something I seldomly use.