How did you come up with your name?

[Professor Gnoll]

Do you have a favorite setting for them?

I'd have to say Wicked Fantasy. I feel like it gives them a bit more personality beyond 'yet another savage raiding race'. The moon connection is cool and they have something of a unique culture.

[Salieri]

I choose to believe you are joking.

Amadeus is in this instance wrong, of course. But despite this, I still always felt common cause with Salieri.

[lothos]

A lot of people assume I'm named after a bad guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer called Lothos. In fact, I stole the name from the science fiction series "Quantum Leap" which ran in the early 1990s.

In the series, there was an artificially intelligent "parallel hybrid computer" called "Ziggy" who the main protagonist (Dr Sam Beckett, played by Scott Bakula) created to run project quantum leap.

In the 5th season of Quantum Leap, a rival group of "Evil Leapers" were introduced. Whereas Dr Beckett was "striving to put right what once went wrong" the evil Leapers were trying to screw up all the happy endings in history and generally do evil stuff, for motivations that were not fully explained in the series.

The Evil Leapers also had an artificially intelligent parallel hybrid computer - an evil opposite of Ziggy.

It was called Lothos.

[quietkal]

I'm not a big talker, so my grandpa started calling me silent Sam. Name's not actually Sam, so I assume it was some kind of phrase of the times. I took to it, and started using it on other places as my username.
Turns out other people run that name too, but I'd taken to it and wanted something related to it. Some kind of parallel, keeping the alliteration and "I don't talk a lot" spirit of the name.
Came up with ol' quickle, and haven't doubled up with anyone else yet.
Q and K aren't really alliterative, but I sort of like the inconsistency.

[mr-mercer]

I was playing a lot of Prototype when I first chose my handle and the name's stuck since then. I feel so accustomed to the name Mercer that I'd feel weird using anything else online. People do often mistake it for a Skyrim or Critical Role reference, though.

[Lexiconjurer]

No inventive or especially interesting origin for my name. I happened to see the words lexicon and conjurer close by each other and went, "...Heeey, I could do that!"

[Antonok]

Play on Mantorok from Eternal Darkness.

Was trying to find a screen name to use on something, and all my old ones were already taken, along with about 500 others I could think of. This was not. Nor usually is taken when I sign up for anything, which is very nice considering how long I've used this name for things (probably about 8 years now)

[SirKazum]

I was playing a lot of Prototype when I first chose my handle and the name's stuck since then. I feel so accustomed to the name Mercer that I'd feel weird using anything else online. People do often mistake it for a Skyrim or Critical Role reference, though.

Whenever I see the name Mercer the first thing that pops into my mind is always the quasi-religious figure in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka the book that got made into the movie Blade Runner). With how famous the name became recently with Prototype and who knows what else, I feel like I'm the only one making that connection

[Arcane_Snowman]

It's firstly a reference to my tendency to be, as well as my appreciation for the, strange. The latter is a pun on my surname, part of which is means snow.

[khadgar567]

Two guesses for any warcraft fan?

[SirKazum]

Two guesses for any warcraft fan?

The alt mage hero you get for participating in Blizzard events or something? Dunno about Warcraft though

[khadgar567]

The alt mage hero you get for participating in Blizzard events or something? Dunno about Warcraft though

same name medhiv's apprentice have the one ​Ben Schnetzer played in the Warcraft movie. When i read the book first time it stick with me and the number part is my high school school number.

[Pogona]

'Pogona' is the genus of lizards that i love most.

More commonly called Bearded Dragons, I've been keeping them as pets for more than 20 years now.

[kyoryu]

An old coworker who was Japanese came up with it. I told him I wanted something that meant "crazy dragon" as a handle.

[druid91]

I used to play Druids in 3.5

And 91 is one of my numbers that I superstitiously believe to be significant.

Erego, Druid 91.

[HalfTangible]

I went by another name on the interwebz once, but I wanted to distance myself from that name as much as possible after getting banned from 4 different forums. Put myself in a different mindset, ya know?

(also, it turns out someone had taken my name already on the board. And got banned. Ominous.)

At the time I played World of Warcraft, and I loved Nether drakes. They were a half-material, half-ethereal form of dragon. So they were half tangible.

[Armok]

Armok is the name of the primary antagonistic force in my homebrew D&D setting which I've just begun running for my friends. He exists as a sort of cosmic counterbalance to the Godess of creation, a God of darkness, ruin, change and destruction. It was either his name or hers, and frankly I think Armok sounds cooler.

[Celticbear]

This is my dad's gamer tag on the ps3, but since he doesn't do online gaming much, I picked up the slack. With all of the friends I made online calling me celticbear, the name just stuck and I started to use it everywhere. My dad's still a little p.o. that I stole it from him, but all's well that ends well

[Ursus the Grim]

My favorite animal has always been the bear.
An old Halo buddy of mine once said I was really quiet and stoic while playing.
I was looking for a GamerTag without numbers or frills.

Thus, I chose Ursus the Grim. I've been using it for years now.

Still have a few other online handles, and many nicknames from when I was a kid, but I've built most of my modern identity around this handle.

[Peelee]

My favorite animal has always been the bear.
An old Halo buddy of mine once said I was really quiet and stoic while playing.
I was looking for a GamerTag without numbers or frills.

Thus, I chose Ursus the Grim. I've been using it for years now.

Still have a few other online handles, and many nicknames from when I was a kid, but I've built most of my modern identity around this handle.

I choose to believe you are Dwight Schrute.

[Ursus the Grim]

I choose to believe you are Dwight Schrute.

Sadly "Beta Vulgaris The Grim" was already taken

[Cola]

Around 10 years ago, while making my first account online, I just chose a random thing I liked: Cola. Ever since, I've been using variations of that name. While signing up for giantitp.com I thought "How about something short that rolls off the tongue nicely." Good thing Cola wasn't taken already.

[Viathon]

I was about 9 or 10. The first internet cafe opened up close to us, my first exposure to the internet at all. The guys there helped my create a Hotmail account (<- I misspelled "Hotmail" once not long after that... never again... it's scarred me for life.) And I was thinking about names. Eventually I settled on one I liked more than any of the other "Code-names" I was using at the time. Viathon. Derived from Leviathan... I still use it on ever site and every game.

[Cluedrew]

This is my dad's gamer tag on the ps3[...]

And some day you must pass this name onto your own gamer children.

Well you don't have to, but imagine some day CelticbearTheForth explaining where they got their username.

[Benthesquid]

I am neither named Benjamin, nor am I in fact a squid.

So it seemed the perfect username.

[LethWorgen]

I played a Worgen Warlock in WoW, and her name's Lethianna

Hence, LethWorgen

[Fishyninja]

Lord I have been using this screen name since (or iterations of it

Spoiler: Aliases

Show

• Fishyninjabread
• Fishyninjabreadman

)
I was about 10 I think.
It came from me making by best friend jump out of his skin he was waiting for me so we could walk to school together.

He didn't notice that I had walked up behind him, when he turned around he jumped and sneezed at the same time, and I think he was trying to say "you are like a bloody ninja!"

So it sounded like *Fish*Ninja, and it kinda stuck.

[Sajiri]

When I was a teen, I had a very cringey online alias (a colour, an animal, and a dark edgy word worked in there). After a year or two I decided I had to come up with something different. I was trying to find a fun way to combine the sounds of my real name and middle name, and Sajiri came to mind. I forget where I'd heard it, and I think it's an Indian name, but it sounded pretty so I went with that.

Most of my friends at the time thought I was just combining Satoshi Tajiri together though

[Alent]

Hey, I get to participate in this with my new forum name!

This one goes way back. I'd decided a story character's nickname was "Al", but never what her full name was. Being a teenager, I solved this the way I thought everyone came up with fantasy names: random syllables from real words! "Alent" was the first setup I found that had a nice ring to it.

For some reason, I would often use this name for my Paladins on various MMOs. The one I liked the most was my Aion Templar, but I have a WoW paladin I still play infrequently that I tend to mentally associate the name with. Most people who've known me as this name probably know me from WoW circles, anyway, hence the Belfadin avatar. (Even though back then it was a Spacegoat...)

[SirKazum]

When I was a teen, I had a very cringey online alias (a colour, an animal, and a dark edgy word worked in there).

I tried imagining what that name was, just to better picture the story as I read it, and what came to me is "Blue Cow Floppy-disk" (hey, it's dark and has edges!)