[Phaedra]

I got asked about it during ILB by Melissa, so I think I may have already talked about it, but:

No, I did not choose my name for its mythological/literary significance.

I have no plans to p*ss off any Greek deities, nor to seduce anyone's stepson, nor to hang myself.

In Greek, Phaedra means "shining one." I liked that. I also liked the PH and the AE dipthong.

That's pretty much it.

[gazdemon]

Gazdemon

[Nadif]

As those of you who played LCP have noticed, my username at the poker table was NanoDiFiga. Nadif is just short for this; I first used it as my username for my first e-mail address ever, circa 1995. Apparently it was made to last.
Anyway, unless you're Italian I still should explain what "nano di figa" means and where it comes from.
First things first: as widely known, Italians just looove to curse, swear, insult and generally use any variety of foul language. It's cultural. Really, if you meet an old friend the most likely salutation will not be "Hi, nice to meet you" but "Ma ciao, vecchia merda!" [literaly "Oh hi, you old piece of shit!"] or such.

So, back in my school days, since I'm not quite the tallest guy in the world, one of my friends came up calling me "Nano di figa". "Nano" is literaly the Italian word for both "dwarf" and "midget", but it's commonly used in Italy to friendly designate a short person; "di figa", like "di merda", "del cazzo" and so on, is a generic insult you can add after a name and has pretty much the same function of the english "f***ing"; literaly, "figa" would be the most commonly used unpolite name for "vagina". Together with its arcaic/regional variant "fica" it's one of the oldest Italian foul words, and can be found even in Dante Alighieri's Comedia (in the Inferno, of course).

The name just stuck; between us friends, we all used to call us with similar names, things like "redhead bastard", "tall dickhead" and so on. Don't get me wrong: we loved each other; we still do, and when we meet it's mandatory to salute each other with the proper insult, before a big hug.
The original "Nano di figa" was eventually shortened (as all our "friendly names") as the cryptic and apparently innocuous "Nadif", so that we could use this in class even in presence of teachers without being sent to the principal and/or suspended. It's the kind of pointless but somehow oh so rewarding thing that most boys do at that age, and part of what makes that part of life so damn amazing, I guess.

But high school ended, each one of us went to a different university, and we lost contact. So, when I opened my first e-mail account, during my first year in university, I guess I just went for something that would remind me of a great time I had with those guys, and how I was missing them, and their fellowship, and that time of life.

That e-mail account is long gone, together with usa.net; but nadif@something is still my primary address.
And yes, I'm still as short as I was fifteen years ago; so please, feel free to call me "Nano di figa", should we meet in person one day.

[Nightmare Tony]

And as a wierd coincidence, my handle also comes from the same genesis as Imbri's. Got a haunted house and our name mascot is the Night Mare, so it is called Nightmare Park. Another fun Xanth reader, and it seemed the good idea at the time.

Anyhoo, picture of my very own Night Mare at www.nightmarepark.com....

Imbri, thanks for reminding me where it all came from. Been so busy, I doth forget...

[Kjartan]

I've been forced to abandon a handfull of usernames created with musical references describing my taste of the hour (or semi-decade as the case may be) first I was known as the £îZÅrd KìNg in the gloriouis BBS days.

Then one fateful day all of these darned computers got hooked up*, and folks like me ran into other folks like me using the same handle and dang near every other folk like me turned out to be a raving jackinape.

So, in order to protect my good name (or actually, in order to surrender my bad name), I moved on to a slightly more hippy handle St_Stephen, which worked wonderfully for a handful of years until I came to the glorious revelation that if I actually went to bed before 5 am, I could go to class and do well. This stroke of brilliance led me to visiting my irc hangouts at a more reasonable time, say 1 or 2 am. Where I met my mortal enemy St_Stephen. Thus began a battle of handle theivery and camping the likes of which has never been bragged of before.

Alas, I was eventually vanquished when I abandoned the internet for a year. (No way in hell was I using dial up after my connection at uiuc).

So, when I finally slunk back into the internets with my tail between my legs (and a nice phat cable pipe), I needed a new nickname.

Thus I chose Kjartan after the well-known and much belovèd Kjartan son of Olaf the Peacock from the ever-popular icelandic saga of the people of Laxdaela, wherein a Mr. Thorgils Hallason gets hit in the foot with a DAMN AXE.

I'm so sorry... but it's true





* Am I the only person in the galaxy from back in the day that still thinks <g> is much cooler than ? Does anyone else remember that?

[lordscrubb]

Well my nick comes from a lovely little story

Long Long Ago In a Galaxy Far Far away(well it was only an hour from me but anyway moving on)

I was on Holiday with my brother two friends and my girlfriend.After our evening meal, a few hands of poker and copious amounts of alcohol I felt the need for a walk to relieve a particular urge , to assist with that urge I politely invited my girlfriend to accompany myself on the aforemetioned walk. To my dismay everybody accepted and came along. Unpreturbed by this I continued a bit further than the rest of the group with my girlfriend and proceded to love her very much. From that point on I have had to live with my nickname being Scrubba as in I will do it anywhere even in the Scrub (My mother even uses this name although she thinks I got it for other reasons)

During the past 10 years I have tried to do numerous stupid things to try to shake the nick name but to no avail.

When I signed up here I needed a nick and in a piss poor attempt to add some dignity to my RL nick name I added the lord bit.

As a post script to my little story I did marry my girlfriend and she is constantly running around the house yelling...........DAMN AXE(I am trying to break the world record for the most overused joke in one thread)

[Sporky]

Heh, my username is.....well, it doesn't really mean anything.

I find the word 'spork' amusing, and my little sister's nickname is Sporky. I didn't want to sign up here with the name I usually do on forums (it seemed out of place for some reason) so I was an unoriginal little sod and stole my sis's name

[Puppy_Zwolle]

I'm using this handle for some 5 years now. Previous names were something like DMP (dead meat puppy) Puppy_Emimf (eat me I'm food) You get the picture.
(In those days I ones scored a 20-3 solo victory against 5 player-team in Quake II. Still proud of that.)

Puppy-The one part that always stayed the same in all my gaming and online use. It lulls most into believing I'm nice. I am, really.

Zwolle- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwolle the place where I live at the moment.

I actually got mail delivery refusal from a friend when I just moved to Zwolle. Reason? He knew nobody in Zwolle that owned a dog.

[sequoya]

Incitatus wrote:

sequoya wrote: Alfred Bester * Incitatus allows his inner deep routed sci-fi geek to burst out of his chest as in "Alien" I love that Name.

Cool I didn't know that he had a character named after him - I haven't watched a lot of Babylon 5.

I'd definitely recommend The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination if anyone needs sci-fi book recommendations

[u05mpb]

Well when I started uni (wow - that was like, 6 years ago! Doesn't feel that long!), my uni email address was a randomly generated u05mpbSPLATabdn.ac.uk.

I just kinda adopted the u05mpb part becuase everytime I tried to register for anything it said the username I had chosen was already taken, but u05mpb is never already taken

[konamouse]

Incitatus wrote:

sequoya wrote: Alfred Bester * Incitatus allows his inner deep routed sci-fi geek to burst out of his chest as in "Alien" I love that Name.

So that is who he was named for.
Kewl beans. Loved the series. We got the DVDs and then watched them almost back to back over the course of a couple of weeks - best way (then stuff is fresh in your mind when it comes around again and you marvel at the genius of JMS with his 5 year plan).

[Incitatus]

sequoya wrote:

Alfred Bester

/me allows his inner deep routed sci-fi geek to burst out of his chest as in "Alien"


I love that Name.

[sequoya]

Contrary to popular belief, I didn't name myself after the founder of the Cherokee alphabet, the tree that was named after him or even Agent Sequoia from the first Aware ARG.

I actually got the name because four or five years ago I was in desperate need of inspiration for a forum name for a games website, and at the time I happened to be reading The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester (an author who I love, although my favourite of his is actually The Stars My Destination), the main character of which is called Sequoya Guess (who was in turn named after the Cherokee inventor dude). I liked the sound of the name, and it's stuck ever since.

[cyberinsekt]

Cyberinsekt has been my primary online name for several years now.

I used to be a regular in several of the more... unruly Usenet newsgroups. These were places where bad behaviour was positively encouraged. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and all that malarkey. Finally, I tired of it, and decided to leave it all behind me. In the process, of course, I'd also have to leave my tarnished old screen name behind, the one that had seen me good for more years online than I care to mention.

Being a long-time fan of The Fall, the choice of a new name seemed obvious. Their album, The Unutterable had recently been released, and it seemed that nobody else had cottoned on to the fact that the track Cyber Insekt had the makings of a great moniker. From then on, I've crawled the online infoweb with pride.

[Atrophied]

Now, should I cross-post, or just link to my original post... Hmm, decisions, decisions... Cross post it is!

Atrophied (pronounced at-roh-fid).
Cunningly stolen from an XBox LIVE user, 'cause I thought it sounded cool for a self confessed gaming geek like myself. A very cunning stunt indeed . It means the wasting away of muscles due to lack of use. (Such as Uma Thurman at the start of Kill Bill). Basically playing on my ability to sit in front of a screen for (lots and lots of) hours at a time without my eyes bugging out.

/me has been known to go for a 30+hr stint of XBox at one time.

Speaking of video games... the best melee weapon in any game EVER was the DAMN AXE in Quake -- Ka-DUNK --