How did you come up with your name?

[factotum]

I wonder what regions of the UK have qualities any Brit would recognize but are utterly unknown to anyone else.

Most of them, probably. The town I was born in (Northampton) is historically famous for producing shoes, for instance, but I'd be surprised if anyone outside Northamptonshire knew that, much less anyone outside the country!

[AmericanCheese]

It's the setting of That 70's Show, so it has that going for it.


....I think.

Well, that's true, but even I forgot about that part, despite loving That 70's Show and the fact that the opening literally yells "HELLO WISCONSIN"

Oh, also some of the best of Midwestern Craft Beers (Best in the World^TM)

[Weimann]

It's half my real last name.

[Peelee]

Most of them, probably. The town I was born in (Northampton) is historically famous for producing shoes, for instance, but I'd be surprised if anyone outside Northamptonshire knew that, much less anyone outside the country!

I thought that was common knowledge, at least to people who know the history and legacy of the noble St. Hubbins (detailed in the Book of Leather, along with St. Hubbins' Prayer, or the "Let our boots be strong" prayer.) Another popular UK shoe district is the Isle of Lucy, if I remember right.

[Smitemeister]

My name was part of the title of a difficulty setting in an old game by Raven/ID software. Not really spectacular but I always kinda liked the ring of it.

[Hamste]

Most of them, probably. The town I was born in (Northampton) is historically famous for producing shoes, for instance, but I'd be surprised if anyone outside Northamptonshire knew that, much less anyone outside the country!

Would have guessed it was famous for being north of Hampton (ham capital of the world, produce the stuff by the ton). After all, everyone knows English name their cities after what they are most famous for.
-Bristol is famous for its bristol board
-bath is famous for its baths
-Canterbury has extremely hard ground
-Hastings which is known for its great speed (how they got a town on wheels, I don't know)
-Hay on Wye is known for horrible sandwiches and their inability to spell rye.
-Sandwich is the enemy of Hay on Wye and known for their great sandwiches
-York is known for its Yorkshire puddings (Ok, this is making me hungry. One last one though)
-Cowbridge which oddly enough is famous for being a small market town in Wales.

[Peelee]

Would have guessed it was famous for being north of Hampton (ham capital of the world, produce the stuff by the ton). After all, everyone knows English name their cities after what they are most famous for.
-Bristol is famous for its bristol board
-bath is famous for its baths
-Canterbury has extremely hard ground
-Hastings which is known for its great speed (how they got a town on wheels, I don't know)
-Hay on Wye is known for horrible sandwiches and their inability to spell rye.
-Sandwich is the enemy of Hay on Wye and known for their great sandwiches
-York is known for its Yorkshire puddings (Ok, this is making me hungry. One last one though)
-Cowbridge which oddly enough is famous for being a small market town in Wales.

Damn, I think you did better than I on that one.

[Hamste]

Damn, I think you did better than I on that one.

Yours was a lot more subtle though (admittedly that is mostly because I never watched Spinal Tap)

I am quite proud of that one though and I didn't even get to talk about the town named after a person sitting on fabric (Berwick-Upon-Tweed) or the town where Lincoln was born called Lincoln. Fun fact, at least 2 of the places on that list are actually known for what I said they were known for.

The sad part is those aren't even some of the weirdest names on the list and I was just looking at the list of cities that used to have town walls. I shudder to think what some of the names not on that list are like. Probably stuff like Bell End, Dog Village and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch

[JobsforFun]

I was 14 years old sitting in my living room trying to think of a new name to use while playing online. I ended up randomly thinking of Jobs_for_Fun, not sure how but it just came into my head...

[SirKazum]

My name was part of the title of a difficulty setting in an old game by Raven/ID software. Not really spectacular but I always kinda liked the ring of it.

I remember that! Was that Heretic?

[Kevin Drake]

I just wanted something that sounded like the name of a dragon tamer, which my character was, and ended up switching my real initials unknowingly and my character was named Kevin Drake. It was either that or donkey kong, and I didn't have to go too far for the name of my character's dragon, Helios, either. I just picked up the video game nearest to me, and named the dragon after the first dragon I saw in the game. The game was the first bakugan game for the ds btw

[Kevin Drake]

The player for our rouge did the same, (initial swap I mean), and our fighter's player just picked the most mysterious name he could think of, and the player of our dragonborn paladin (well not him but I made the character cuz we needed a tank) just slapped the words "armored dragon" into a translator and fiddled around with it until he got something that sounded cool.

[Foxtail]

It's the surname of a Bard I played for a while. Plus I just like foxes.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

The Sly part comes from Sly Cooper, the Guy McFly bit is not a reference to the band or the movie but stolen from a character in an obscure webcomic I read when I was about... 19 or so.

[Goldiefish]

Goldie is part of my real name and I just liked the pun of Goldiefish

[Laylyn]

I used some of the Dragonlance era naming styles for elves, for a Dragon Magazine Mariner character in 1st ed. Years later, I used the name as a gaming handle.


/salute

[sktarq]

SK are my initials. Tarq is short for Tarquin which is what my father wanted to name me but my mother raised a level of Cain or three to stop him. Anyway some of my friends found out about my father's plans and started to call me Tarquin or just Tarq/Tark for short. Out of the 300+ nicknames I had at boarding school (apparently my real name was too boring for the weird kid) that Tarquin group was one I minded least. Thus it ended up on an old email account circa 1999. Never shook it off as a moniker,

[Traab]

Back when the hottest game on the mmo market was Everquest, I got the game and one of my first characters was called Traab. He turned out to be my main. Then when I switched to other games, like dark age of camelot, lotr online, everquest 2, and world of warcraft, I kept the name because it let people I knew from other titles know that it was me. I actually stumbled across my original everquest guild from back in 99 on WoW when it was a new release entirely by accident. They just happened to pick the same server as me, and when I saw someone else whose name was familiar, I asked, identified myself and boom, I was a member of a raid guild from before molten core even being in the patch notes.

So long story short, I use Traab for just about everything I do online. You never know when you will bump into old friends.

[Keldrin]

As others have posted, mine is a character from my past. Keldrin didn't start off at first level, and slogged like all my other characters. A couple of friends and I wanted to see what the heady high levels looked like in AD&D, and screw level limits,etc.
He was an elven arch-mage/bard. We had a lot of fun, and without the urgency of getting XP, we stayed in town and role played. All our power gamer fantasies took a back seat to just having fun.

Meanwhile his relative Chondrin (MU/Ftr/Thf), took 15 years to get up to the midteens. Both were fun in their own way.

Chondrin was from The Sunset Warrior, and Keldrin I made up as a variation.

[Spinach]

I had a distinct taste of it in my mouth when I joined.

Also the name of Venusaur I raised back when Pokemon Red came out. Yes the old one.

Can't believe such a common noun wasn't taken. I still have a lingering suspicion I spelt it wrong or something.

[Cluedrew]

Out of the 300+ nicknames I had at boarding school (apparently my real name was too boring for the weird kid)

Some people just have this ability to collect nicknames. The number of times I had to clarify "No, Human is not Pablo, that's Worm" when talking about my day back in high school.

To Spinach: I doubt Brussel Sprouts is taken either. (Although even spell check doesn't want to associated itself with that one so maybe I did spell it wrong.)

[NecroDancer]

I like music and I think talking to ghosts would be cool. Also one of my favorite characters in D&D was a necromancer/bard who had an unhealthy love of the song "Thriller"

Also the thought of a bunch of zombies getting together to bust a move is hilarious

[RPGNovice]

I am a novice at RPGs, so for now it is an accurate label. Later on it would be humorously ironic and a reminder that everyone starts as a newb.

[Hamste]

I like music and I think talking to ghosts would be cool. Also one of my favorite characters in D&D was a necromancer/bard who had an unhealthy love of the song "Thriller"

Also the thought of a bunch of zombies getting together to bust a move is hilarious

So it isn't a reference to Crypt of the NecroDancer? It is a rhythm based rogue like game from 2015.

[D20ragon]

D20... and Dragon... I'm innovative, I know.

[Avianmosquito]

A fist fight I got into when I was a little kid. I was a lot smaller than the guy I was fighting, so he said I was "like a mosquito". So I said "Then at least I can fly". He responded with, get this, "Then you're an avian mosquito, you're still a bug". That made so little sense I couldn't help laughing at him and the fight came to a screeching halt.

[Mith]

Mith short for Mithrandir. I originally used the full name, but forum members shortened it down when referring to me, so I did a final rename as Mith and try and keep it or a variant of it as a tag.

[KillingAScarab]

I latched onto #93 hard. I enjoyed the wordplay enough to come up with a song the band on the poster would perform, and which album it would have been released in proximity. The propensity for optimized rangers to have favored enemies which make more sense tactically than due to their backstories plays into it, too. What might bear explaining is that the song has a more complex history than at first glance at the title. At some point I might change it to KissingAScarab, but there's going to need to be some character growth.

Balls, I overestimated how well known my beloved state is. Wisconsin is basically Dairy: The State: The Motion Picture and I'd like to think that it's known for the Republican Party, Harley Davidsons and um... cherries?

Disillusioning moment for me

Nah, the Republican political party's not something I associate it with. If I must mention politics and Wisconsin in the same sentence, I'm more likely to consider that Daily Show episode in which John Oliver looked for Wisconsin Democrat senators in Illinois as if it were a warzone and eventually encountered warlord Rod Blagojevich.

It's the setting of That 70's Show, so it has that going for it.


....I think.

What, no mention of Happy Days? How about its quasi-spin-off show Laverne & Shirley, the opening to which was re-enacted in Wayne's World just before the Alice Cooper concert in Milwaukee?

My name was part of the title of a difficulty setting in an old game by Raven/ID software. Not really spectacular but I always kinda liked the ring of it.

I remember that! Was that Heretic?

It does indeed appear to be from Heretic.

[Peelee]

So in the '70s, a show about the '50s in Wisconsin was popular. In the '90s, a show about the '70s in Wisconsin was popular.

If anyone wants to break in to the TV game, shoot a quick pilot about the '90s in Wisconsin. And give me a cut when it inevitably becomes successful.

[Delicious Taffy]

My username is a Psychonauts reference that just sort of stuck.