91 replies to this topic

[Parody of Language]

Hmm, I'd call us wise for no other reason than that we're the only creature that is aware of its own death.

[Mahout]

My name means 'elephant driver'. I discovered this word whilst playing scrabble

[Maverick]

Maverick because I like the name.

[MichaelDomini]

It all began on a dark and dreary night on an RP forum.  I was looking for a good sounding name for a character, and eventually put my first and baptismal names together, michael Dominic, and came up with Michael Domini.

[cambusken]

...many moons ago, when I was trying to get my first user name for an email address, I seemed always to home in on one used by some other person somewhere in the universe. Two local saints came to my rescue in the end. The rest is history, though I have to confess not as interesting as the Fall of Constantinople.

[P. Menard]

Jorge Luis Borges Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Quote

It is a revelation to compare Menard’s Don Quixote with Cervantes’. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine):

Quote

. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time,
depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and
adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.

Written in the seventeeth century, written by the “lay genius” Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:

Quote

. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time,
depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and
adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.

History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases–exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor –are brazenly pragmatic.

[chascomm]

Godot said:

I cannot think of a single forum I've visited that there hasn't been a thread devoted to people explaining their usernames or their rationale for so choosing. So it's about time we had one here at TGL.


I'll start it off:

Seven or eight years ago I was in a bar with some friends and we were playing this tv trivia game. In order for the points to "count", I had to register an account. I figured I would just pull a name out of the air at random that wouldn't be used and would certainly have a few of the regulars at the bar wonder where it came from. Thus, "Godot".

A few years later, when I fell into the online world of message boards, it just seemed a natural choice to continue with. Lucky for me, I haven't run into anyone using the same name elsewhere.

So, how about you?

Mine is not too interesting. I was always trying to tell some blokes about what they were up against. I heard several times them sayin amonst themselves 'thats jest the urge to tell us anything;this friend of ours.' So wen I tried to dream up a name I first wrote down then found I could not improve on it over tea and chat.

[Michio]

michio means the one on the right path.

michi = 道　＝ road, way, path

o =　夫 =　husband

Even though o means husband, we can interpret it as simply male, since another common name is michiko, a female name. ko means child.

The more you know.

[DeadCanDance]

Well, my old self, deadcandance (here I am, newly reborn and already crawling back in my thoughts to the old me) is named after a musical group I particularly love. When they were asked where the name came from, the answer was something to the effect of :

We use our instruments in such a way as to try and bring out what we hold to be the latent potentiality for animation and for life in the inanimate.

I just liked the name, but now, with DeadCainDanced, I am in another realm of meaning. My current name is about how we dance over our destruction, celebrate this misanthropic impulse that rests within us, and we do so often without even knowing it....

[Tachyon]

Tachyon - a theoretical particle that travels faster than light - the faster it goes the less energetic it is. I called my sharpie Tachyon but that was wishful thinking - we still come last just about every time we race. Sailing is a friendly sport; if you sail badly enough for long enough they give you first on handicap if you finish on the same day as the other boats - a typical race being around two hours duration.

[anthrogator]

I received my B.A. from the University of Florida in Anthropology.  Hence "anthro" and the UF mascot "gator".  Not particularly clever, but at least I have never had it denied for being a duplicate.

[The Moving Finger]

My username is the first three words of the first and only poem that I've ever read which made me cry. The poem appears in Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake.

The first time that I read the poem, I was definitely moved by it, and I subsequently highlighted it and marked the page. It wasn't until I read the poem a second time aloud to my girlfriend that the stark reality which it describes became manifest to me. Very seldom in life is one presented with a fundamental truth. This is one of them. I could do nothing else but cry.

[the sad clown]

"the sad clown" was an attempt at encapsulating ironic self-depreciation.  I've used it elsewhere and simply carried it over to here.

[muraii]

In the days before I gave it up (and near the top of my stack of near-future ambitions), I tried to write fantasy short stories.  One involved a character named "Muraii," who was the singleton of her species.  She was imbued with some interesting characteristics, but I don't actually recall them anymore; and of the few stories I pursued with anything approaching dedication, hers was not among them.  But there was a solitude devoid of loneliness in the ideas I built her from; her life was to be an incessant sojourn through but not within the world.  And there was something, too, about her character being strong and feminine without being womanly, if that makes any sense, and I suppose it served as a means of exploring being the only child, only son, of a strong, single mother figure.  So very early on in my online endeavors (1996 or so), I chose "muraii" as my username.  Across several boards, and several Usenet groups, I built a small internet archive of activity.

[Peter]

Just to say that 'ptermx' is now rebranded as 'Peter'. Spiffy new name, same great product!
I found that my customers were calling me that anyway, so I thought I'd bag it rather than get into a trademark dispute.

Peter

[Sugoi]

About ten years ago (when I was 10) my mum opened a complement shop (clothes, silver jewelery, purses...) and while we started searching for a name among characters of Basque mythology I found this character, Sugoi (also known as Sugaar or Maju) who was a kind of human-snake hybrid, he was married to the goddess Mari, and it was said that when there was a storm, it was because they were having sex. I found it a very beautiful story and also liked the simplicity and sound of the name   So, as it was then when I started to use the Internet, I started using the name everywhere around the net, and still here I am, with the same magic name   (Sorry for my bad English...)

[Sugoi]

By the way, in Basque, Sugoi means something like "high fire". I've been told that sugoi means beautiful in Japanese, but I'm not very sure of that, is it possible?

[ughaibu]

Sugoi, on 24 May 2010 - 06:23 PM, said:

I've been told that sugoi means beautiful in Japanese, but I'm not very sure of that, is it possible?

The meaning is something like 'far out'.

[Sugoi]

I see. Thanks!! That seems to fit me a little better... heh =D

[DaveT]

Well, my real name is Ivan O'Toole III, and my cat is called Max, my gerbil is called Gary, and my bad-tempered Walrus is called Cuddles, so DaveT seemed an obvious choice.

[Sugoi]

[Fede]

It's my surname. It's pronounced in two ways (geographically sensitive)
1) feh-deh in spanish
2) feh-ddie when i was living in the states.

[AestheticizeAnalog]

Certain fans of early electronic music have an obsession with analog instruments over digital instruments, and therefore I think they Aestheticize the Analog.....

[Chato]

My dog was kind enough to allow me to use his name as my alias. The irony here is that he is named after an Apache Indian I admire, and three months after giving the dog his name, I found out what it actually means; "Flat Nose."  

Dave