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Even though sites like Facebook have encouraged the use of our real names online, most of us have been gaming and chatting under pseudonyms for much of our internet based lives. Often we go through several different ones before something sticks and once it does, that name can have a big impact on how we are perceived online. This isn't that surprising when it comes to reading names in your head, but with the growth of eSports more and more people are having to read these names out loud and it really highlights how bizarre some of them can be.
Kotaku has taken an interesting look at some of the world's eSports players and not only how odd some of their aliases are, but how those players adopted them. Take Kevin “Dr PeePee” Nanney for example, who plays Smash Bros competitively. His name came from when he spilled orange juice on his trousers as a kid, looking like he'd wet himself.
As basic as this decision is, it can end up defining your identity in huge aspects of your life
An “Balls” Le who plays League of Legends for Cloud 9, picked his name so that his friend could have the same one, only using upper case i's, so there would be ‘two balls' in a single game. JesusStick, real name Yoon-Soo Park, who plays pro DOTA 2, is just a big fan of Jesus Christ.
But forget those guys. They're just big eSports players. We want to know about KitGuru readers. What's your online alias and where did it come from?
Mine, for those that are interested, is “Whoopty.” I found it while playing Command and Conquer Generals back in my early teens. During a game against a Polish gentlemen, I got cocky as I thought I was about to win and began taunting him, suggesting I was going to ‘whoop his ass'. When he turned the tables on me however, he retaliated in kind, eventually asking me the fateful question: “Who is the whoopty now?”
The answer of course, was me. And so it stuck. It's been my online handle ever since and even features in my professional email address and Twitter account.
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KitGuru Says: So what about it guys? Where did your online nicknames come from?
Well I guess I’ll start the ball rolling. Mine goes WAY back to my days on CB radio…back to when the FCC still required a license! 38 yrs back I settled on DRAGONFIRE and have used it or DRAGONFIRE_Sr on line in falcon 3.0, doom, on kali and ever since!
Mine came from a nickname I got in the Army. SLOWPOKE, because everything i did in my MOS was slow and meticulous. Anyways, after i got out of the Army i started driving Truck OTR (Over The Road) and whenever I stopped at triuck stops i would play video games. I couldn’t put the whole name in when i had top scores so I shortened it to “Slopok” since the games would only allow a max of 6 characters! That was back in the 90’s and it has stuck ever since!
Well mine is Karumu which was just my first name translated into hiragana then using the pronunciation for the English spelling its been around for about 5 years and I’ve not used anything different since then, used it on WoW, league of legends and various other games and I’m likely to use it for a long time
Mines my actual name with my last name shortened, Pelhamds. That and my other handle which came from me playing Red Orchestra and ARMA, I was acting like a Commissar and ended up stuck with that name as well.
Mine for DotA is “Meepo”, because he’s an annoying hero that’s very difficult to play, but great when people play him successfully. I like the idea of people seeing my username and thinking, “nooo, anyone but Meepo…”.
Mine came from the game SOCOM in my PsP, Which also reflects how I lived my childhood as lonely, not being able to get outside and play like other kids because I was prohibited by my parents, but deep inside I wanted to explore and shine. That’s why I’ve stuck with the name LoneStar.
I got mine from the time I was 12/13 years old, something like that (I’m 22 now). This was in the time I played a lot of online games on sites like ArmorGames, with some games requiring a nickname. I sometimes just made something up, but I wanted a cooler one, something that could stick with me.
I looked around and saw a book about ‘Dosha’s’, it was named something like ‘TriDosha’. I then thought, that’s it! So my nickname ‘TriDosha/Tridosha’ was born. I added an ‘i’ in front (iTridosha) a couple of years ago since I thought a lower case letter in front of an upper case letter looked cool.(Nothing to do with Apple or anything).
See here for ‘Dosha’s’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosha
And one of the first sentences: “A dosha (doṣa), according to Ayurveda, is one of three bodily humors that make up one’s constitution. These teachings are also known as the Tridosha theory.” (I really can’t remember the book or anything).
A long while back I was playing Diablo 2. I figured I’d pick a random name, and looked up to the description. Figured I’d pick a random word and spell it backwards. Quarter. Retrauq looked a little odd though, so I replaced the q. Retrauk. Thought it sounded cool, and it’s stuck as my display name for nearly everything since.
I got mine when I was about 10, 10 years now, and I actually got it from a random name generator from a game named Tibia which generated the Name Gafail Galigoudo ten year latter and I am Now Gafail, and if I ever need a surname, Galigoudo I once tried a new one, like 4 years ago, and it felt wrong, like I was Betraying half of myself…. and that is that, in every single game I play I am Gafail, Galigoudo, or them both combined.
I’ve always wondered where Markus Persson’s alias “Notch” derived from. I would’ve loved to go MineCon to ask him at the panel but I would’ve probably just been drowned out by kids wondering how to do things that google could’ve told them
mine is “smalldjo” it was my cousin’s on this game that i wanted to play , and he gave me his account , so people started calling me like this and i got used to it , so i’m using it everywhere now 🙂
My current alias is Freakz0rz, used to use Gekker which is dutch for “more crazy”. But as the online community started to grow Gekker was picked more often. Back in those days the 1337sp33ch started to get populair. since crazy didn’t really looked good, I decided to stick with freak. The z0rz part came from energyz0rz or something like that. It was unique and still is mostly. Though I found some others using it, but’s that’s mainly on the asian webz0rz
Mine in RockCrawler from a Rc RockCrawler Forum where I am a activ user
I had just got an xbox 360 and wanted highwayman (a song by the highwaymen) but it was gone, so one of the suggestions was demonhighwayman and I just went with it rather than sit for hours trying to get something I really really wanted. It has stuck ever since, and has been handy because everything I need to create a name for lets me use it 🙂
Got mine from from the days CoDMW2. I had always used silenced weapons and always get my kills without being found. Also everyone knew I’d be in the group voice chat, but I rarely spoke. Also the same when I game with my mates with every other game. It pretty much fitted me socially, and in character. Soooo I was pretty much known as the silent one in the group. That’s how I got ‘The Silent’ and ‘Thee Silent’ (both in some communities due to forgetting my old email and password xD) Also found out that I’m the only ‘The Silent’ user till early 2014 :/ Used to be the only one for 5 years. Oh well
I’ve got mine from way back in the glorious days of Jedi Academy. I just loved these motherfuckers~
I’ve got mine from way back in the glorious days of Jedi Academy: ‘reborn’ – I just loved these motherfuckers.
Kumochisonan was a name I invented for Age of Empires II online play (Yes I am that old.), As one that sounded Japanese but wasn’t actually a real name, it’s uniqueness has been a boon ever since. I also used Ayari for female characters, which is a name I stole from one of the players of the old Star Wars MUSH that he had used to name his ship.
Razli. Was making a Dwarf in WoW. My name beings with R and my surname L. I picked something with those in mind. I now use Razz_Lithar. Its derived from Razli, Lithe means fast and agile, and it was used for a TOR character. Most people call me Razz.
I came out whit the nick Axefel from my last names: Acevedo Feliz whit some little changes Axe-fel (and i was looking for some final fantasy look-alike name xD)
Hmm Got my name from out of nowhere or probably I just like the word Serpent and and the mythologies including it was good then when I was thinking of a pseudonym my friends suggested a pun name Sir Cle then i thought there are no possible epic logos or symbols for it then thought of Sir Pent
I got my name from a nickname off Xbox. We had a clan of people named various objects and then “Gravy” after it. Mine was “GhostGravy” So in kind, my nickname was “Ghosty”
Himaro. I coined it back when I played Medal of Honor : Allied Assault and Runescape while browsing chat rooms. It has stuck with me ever since. Until recently, I was the only himaro about.
Before that I had typical things 13 year olds come up with.
Razsal; was making a Orc hunter in wow a few years back and needed a name Raz as in the Razgriz Demon from Ace combat 5 and the sal just came from it needing to sound like it could be an Orc name so if i can’t or don’t want Razsal for some reason i make it Raz something.
Alright, I’ll bite. My first “gamertag” was nomoreheros, because I was an angsty 12-year-old. Heroes is misspelled because…well, I was an angsty 12-year-old who also couldn’t spell. I then used it to be an overly sarcastic, opinionated and all around dumb 12-year-old. It lasted a long time, and I still use it for some things to this day.
My current one is Hellcatenstein. I don’t really know how I came to that combination, but according to a friend, I was creating my Xbox account at his house, and when it came time for the gamertag, I said something along the lines of, “Whatever, it’s Hellcatenstein now.” I wish I could say it was more interesting and storied…
Final Fantasy
Mine nickname is Marmo. For me was really easy to choose.
Back in time was a commercial from Milka chocolate with some woodchucks packing the chocolate. Was one of the most funny and biggest commercial running into my country, Romania. At that time i was really hairy so my friends start to call me “Marmota” (woodchuck in romanian language) so i stick over internet with that nickname too. From that moment i always use Marmo (like abreviation) or Marmo219 (21.9 comes from birthday).
Allexio. from… Dofus. Dont you dare make fun of me, it was a great game in its own right. And I played it when I was 11 years old (so 7 years ago). Ive stopped playing the game, but the name has stuck ever since.
Mxfox408 – MX came from BMX bikes which I used to ride and do tricks on especially vert. Fox came from fox Racing which is a brand for BMX bikers, and 408 is just a random number. This name has stuck with me with every game I played, and will continue using it as my alias.
Kelikke- I was trying to think of a name for a teenage youtube account, ended up on a word rambler website, put in window licker and out popped Kelikke.
When I was 13, I decided that I wanted to make a YouTube channel, so I came up with a few possible names to use. One was Tempered Ice, and the other one Molten Diamond. I chose Tempered Ice because I thought it sounded much better, and I’ve used it for lots of things since. When I first made a character in Skyrim, I decided that ‘Tempered Ice’ wasn’t suitable for an actual name, so I tried translating it into one of the Scandinavian languages (I don’t remember which) using google translate. I wasn’t convinced that it knew what I meant with the word ‘tempered’, though, so I ended up combining half of each of the two original names I came up with to create the name ‘Isen Diamant’. I usually use that for character names in RPGs now.
Years ago back in the early 90’s I decided I needed an online handle, first I used coolcomp69 mostly because I was so fascinated with computers and the 69 was something that was chosen as a kid because I thought it was cool. Then several years later I decided that wasn’t what I wanted to use forever so I randomly typed some letters and now I am Fyca.
SakuraFrost <3… At first it used to be Ikuze.17 … Ikuze is Japanese for let's go.. It's one thefirst Jp words that I learned… 17 is my fav number.. Then after a few years I got bored of it… I was making my LoL account ang Ikuze.17 and Ikuze.. Surprisingly was taken.. So I wanted something that will have a relation to japan and a favorite thing… Sakura= Japan Frost=Fav. element… SakuraFrost.. on some acc I put SakuraFrost.17..
I used to just name myself L. (because of my name) back when Quake 2 and III Arena were out, but I later watched the anime Death Note and for the sake of avoiding that connection (though i don’t mind it now) I later changed it to Hellspawn, and later on (because let’s be honest, Hellspawn is not exactly an uncommon nickname) changed it to Onomatopesha. I saw a while ago a play called “Onomatopeyas al viento” (Onomatopeyas in the wind or sth like that) and I thought of using that with the intentional typo.
Now i just go with Qain (love the sound of the name), Onomatopesha on older accounts and L.
I just use my name, cause whatever. I’m not going to be any more or less an enigma than I already am being online. I never use my full name of course, but still works plenty enough. Plus it’s easier for people to say my name over something like Zejgble4nubm4g. I’ve had many aliases before, but they’re all usually random and never stick.