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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I am kind of introverted, am I actually introvert or socially awkward or whatever doesn't matter, but for the simplicity I'm introvert and I like cats.

[–] earphone843@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago

I have my email service generate an alias and I use that as my username. I delete my account every few months and make a new one on a different instance.

[–] kubok@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

My username is called after my first home brewed beer. It's a portmanteau of a slur used for people of my city and the type of beer I brewed that day.

[–] WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago
[–] Thcdenton@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago
[–] Canopyflyer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Former skydiver.

Performed a lot of Demonstration jumps into everything from airports, race tracks, professional sports stadiums, high school sports stadiums, golf courses, and a few other places that required skill and knowledge to land in safely.

Also, spent a lot of time teaching canopy skills to up and coming jumpers.

[–] fiendishplan@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

A fiend told me I'd make a good scooby-doo villain and it wasn't taken by anyone else.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I read a fantastic book where there was the count Valmond or something.

Best name ever, never taken on forums and such, always free!

Til I learned it was de Valmont, not Valmond 🙃 but here I am!

Funnily it's usually pre-used om platforms nowadays.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hahaha Valmont is a small local grocery chain here.

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[–] Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago
[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Breakfast the day I made my account

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I misspelt it back in yahoo chat days (yea, that was a while ago) and stuck with it because it is unique enough that no one else would accidentally grab it.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

My nickname was originally "Stoy On" but over time it got shortend to "Stoy".

"Stoy On" comes from a small Swedish comedy film by "Galenskaparna och After Shave", a fantastic group of theatre actors who has had a very long and successfull carreer of comedy theatre, television and film. They specialized in musicals, with plenty of amazing wordplay and some fantastic songs.

Anyway, the film I am talking about this time is the TV film "The Castle Tour", the summary of it is that a group of Swedish tourists are going on a tour of a castle in Sweden, the guide has them confused with an English tour, and the joke is that the guide just speaks a nonsense language.

Now, one of the nonsense pharses the guide used was "Stoy on!", which is meant to mean "Se upp!" in Swedish, and that experssion has two meanings in Sweden, the normal one "Look out!", and the litteral one "Look up!"

At the same time I was getting annoyed at not having a standard nickname online and when gaming.

And since I thought it was fun to have a nickname that meant "Look out!" in some ways, and I liked the sound of it, I adopted "Stoy On" as my standard nickname, and since it got shortend I mainly go by "Stoy" online, or, if it is taken, "Stoy On".

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

It sounds cute.

[–] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago

It's a permutation of a permutation of a pseudo random username.

[–] spittingimage@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

As a bookish child, I made weekly trips to the library. To get to the kids section I had to pass the large print shelf, and there was one book that was always there: The Spitting Image. The gargoyle on the cover scared me! But when I finally looked him straight in the eye I found that he was trying to look furious, but came across as a little goofy. That's the way I imagine myself, too.

mine is just my normal name given to me in usual earth custom with my parental units assigning me one and another indicating my placement in a lineage. So boring and typical of the species. I mean our species.

[–] Lennnny@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

My name is Helen. I hated that there were no good nicknames for it (ugh, Helly...) but I love my name. Mentioned this to a friend who was like "you could use other parts of the name for a nickname..." and suggested Lenny. As a woman on the internet, having a gender ambiguous username is very beneficial, so I adopted it, and I absolutely love it. I added extra ns because then it'd look like bad kerning Lemmy.

[–] Tower@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago

I'm 6'4" / 193cm, so I'm taller than most.

[–] HarvesterOfEyes@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

Because I always wanted to have my own theme song.

But really, I browsed through my music collection by alphabetical order and it sounded cool. Blue Öyster Cult always delivers, even with the title of their songs.

[–] dumbass@leminal.space 5 points 1 week ago

I dunno, but people sure love calling me it all the time.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's norwegian shorthand/slang for "No you" (nei du), in the context of for example "Oh no you don't!". A friend of mine had (for unknown reasons) that as his MSN-status for years before his accidental death, and it kind of stuck in the back of my mind. It popped up when I was registering a lemmy account.

This is my 3rd account:
I forgot the password of neidu. Plus it was on .ml before I learned the implications of .ml so no real loss.
neidu2 was on a good instance. The only downside was that people kept assuming I was dutch. Not too bad, as I've been called worse things, but it is more useful for me to mod from sh.itjust.works instead.

For the record: only the accounts mentioned here are mine. Any other variations that may or may not fit my schema are to be treated as someone else. The ones I interact with regularly know this and have other methods for verifying my identity, so don't bother trying to become a mod through setting up neidu4+.

[–] ladytaters@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

When I was younger, I was crazy about Idaho and wanted to move there. One of my old nicknames was Lil Miss Potatoes. Now I'm a grown ass woman, so I'm Lady Taters. People tend to think it's a nickname related to my chest though.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 1 week ago

It is kind of descriptive...

[–] fahfahfahfah@lemmy.billiam.net 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Was supposed to be the thing the kid says in the “pork chop sandwiches” Gi Joe spoof, but everyone seems to think it’s a reference to Jeff Dunham

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[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

I can be a bit melodramatic and sassy, also like making music and looking good. Long-time fan miku fan too.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week 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

[–] Nikls94@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

An ex drinking buddy was drunk and high as F and would butcher the name of several people. I couldn’t let this one die.

[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 4 points 1 week ago

it's better than what I had before

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago

I can remember the Ace part of AceFuzzLord very well. Comes from me always using Ace whenever a game requires a profile name or a 3 letter initial.

The Fuzz Lord part I don't remember really at all, but I assume the Lord part comes from the fact I think pretty highly of myself despite the fact I'm a nobody.

Oh, and do y'all see AceFuzzLord or do y'all see Dizzy Devil Ducky? I have no idea who sees either. I see Ace and I've had other people see DDD. Either way, DDD comes from the fact that he's my favorite Tiny Toons character.

[–] ClipperDefiance@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Clipper Defiance was a Boeing 707 operated by Pan Am. Its main claim to fame was when on February 7th, 1964 it brought The Beatles to America for the first time.

[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I got named Bizzle in like 2008 because my real name wasn't cool enough, it just stuck

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[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago

I once created a character in a story when I was a child about a Jack Green from the planet Æarth, and named an account on a popular site accordingly as a similarly young person, as I lacked nominative creativity, evidently. People kept getting confused between Æarth and Earth so I just changed it to Earth for future accounts.

[–] jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Means potato / lame

water, metal, pressure and faith.

leaky showers and prayers.

[–] EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Quote from Fight Club

[–] Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago

Around the time I first started using this username about 7 or so years ago, I was playing through the Megaman Zero games, that take place approximately 100 years after the events of Megaman X, which take place during "year 21xx". So 'Zero22xx' specifically references the version of Zero from the Megaman Zero games.

On top of that, I also just thought it was a cool mix of letters and numbers that can look pretty random if you don't know the games, or if I'm not using a profile pic.

The only annoying thing is that at some point around the time I created this username, I started seeing an anime character called 'ZeroTwo' around. So I guess it could be mistaken that I'm referencing that too.

[–] ethaver@kbin.earth 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I believe it's self explanatory.

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[–] TheKracken@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Found a Kraken in Ultima Online. Thought it was rad and didn't know how to spell it as an 11 year old.

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[–] LGTM@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

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[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

HUM - The Scientists

Keep this benzine ring around your finger, and think of me when everything you wanted starts to end

The song is one of my favorites. About a couple scientists, probably in a relationship, testing drugs

With HUM, you never can really tell what they are talking about but it's always pretty poetry and awesome music. With a good imagination.

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[–] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My girlfriend calls me that regularly.

[–] sleepmode@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I zonk out really fast. Sometimes mid-sentence.

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[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago
[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Stole it from a user on a pirate bbs I was a member of in the early 90s, Digital Underground

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