A lot of names seem to be puns or wordplay. Why do these particular names resonate with those particular posters? Others seem to be versions of real names. I’m not looking for real names here, paranoids, but I’m curious as to how the various decisions are made around how people present themselves in such a forum. E.g. my own, CC, is constructed from my actual name in a way. That’s the closest I’d like to come to identify myself here. You?
So, Cobra Commander!
We meet again!
Your fiendish plans end NOW!!
YO JOE!!!
Mine is from the movie Dr. Strangelove. Merkwurdigliebe is a sort of literal translation of the word Strangelove. It’s not a real surname like Strangelove isn’t in English. It’s mentioned in the movie that Merkwurdigliebe changed his name to Strangelove when he became a US citizen.
A college friend was in a band called SUMMERHOUSE which was named after his mother’s, uhm, summer house in East Hampton, NY.
The had t-shirts with the band name in iron on letters across the front of the T-shirt. Bear in mind this is 1970, so iron on letters were the norm.
Well, the t-shirt was well worn, and the SUM had fallen off the shirt, so we used to affectionately call the band MERHOUSE.
And here we are. Now I’m sure you’re sorry you asked 
I was trying to come up with a good doper name and it happened that I was watching A Few Good Men on TV, right at the place where Jack Nicholson’s character delivers the famous line, “You can’t handle the truth!”. It fit perfectly with what was going on in my life at the time.
After playing with the dogs, I’d be covered in puppy fur, and my wife would say that I was all “linty.” At some point, I just came up with Linty Fresh, right around the time I signed up for the SDMB. I figured it wasn’t much goofier than some of the nic’s I’d been seeing, so I used that.
Although since then, someone’s created an online clothing store called Linty Fresh, so my name isn’t original any more. I’ve actually got a new nic picked out, and I’m just working up the energy to email a mod and ask for it to be changed.
I’m a derelict.
I’m a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber fan from way back. His musical “Whistle Down the Wind” has a song about a character named “Annie Christmas.” My last name is “Anne” and my B-day is 12/25.
[/keanu voice] Whoa. [/end keanu voice]
I just started the thread ‘A Comic Of My Username’. in which I found a comic
embodying the joke that is my username (This link should also answer the OP question).
Searching New Posts, this thread about ‘Where do people get there SDMB names’ from is right below it, followed by ‘Are there higher dimensions’.
I think the Matrix is broke. I’m gonna go lie down
From this Kids in the Hall sketch. I used to be in great shape back in my University days. I was given the nickname after a camping trip only a year after graduation.
I guess it was about 20 years ago that my hubby and I got our first internet connectivity. At that time, your ISP would provide you with an email addy that was typically your first name plus last initial, all in lower case, @ whateverISP.net.
Mine was Norine W, or norinew. So it became my default username whenever I created an account. I never imagined (because I knew what it meant) that others would parse it as “nori-new” until people on the SDMB (the first message board I ever joined) until Dopers started calling me “nori”.
I’ve thought about changing my username to something that better reflects me (if I did change it, I’d probably change it to Queen Laura DeLoessian from King’s The Talisman. But for one thing, people around here already know me as norinew, and for another thing, that’s a lot to type out!
Haven’t thought of anything else I like. Plus, with norinew, I can pretend I was just being all simplistic and existentialist and stuff instead of admitting I couldn’t come up with anything clever. . .
There are a whole lot of us named for Discworld characters.
I had no idea when I picked my name that I was wandering into a whole nest of Pratchett fans …
Some usernames are lovingly handcrafted. But most of us just order one from the giant SDMB Username Warehouse, just outside of Elgin, IL.
Mine’s loosely based on my real first name, Lynn. Here’s how.
Lynn, nickname Linny
Linny typed into the old (now gone) Japanese translator on www.stupid.com (I know it’s not an accurate Japanese translator, it just changes sounds to Japanese syllables: Rinni
I prefer lowercase r, so rinni! There’s no deep meaning to the lowercase in “rinni”, it’s just because I like the shape of the word more in lowercase, and I won’t bite anyone who types it “Rinni”.
People also call me rinni IRL, it’s a nickname of mine.
Pretty boring as Doper names go, but I like simplicity for myself.
I play rugby for a team called the Santos. My college club was called the Pygmies, and my old name on the boards was Pygmy Rugger.
But the problem is that the one you really want is usually out of stock.
A while back, I was in a Star Wars geeking out phase, and was playing X-Wing a lot. On IRC, I decided to change my name to “Rogue Leader” to reflect on the awesomeness of my skills in the game (made it all the way to the fifth mission of the first campaign), and someone commented that “Rogue” looks similar to “Ragu” (a brand of spaghetti sauce)
So, I’m Raguleader. 
My username, kitemaker_chuck means that I’m a Kitemaker, and that Chuck is my real first name.
I LOVE to make kites, mostly (single-line) boxkites, roller kites, flare kites and delta kites, and I LOVE to fly kites (especially ones I’ve made!)
Mine is from the science fiction novel Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster.
Maybe you and a few others who have weighed in/will weigh in can further explain how that particular name was chosen. I trust you’ve read other books. Why not Ishmael or Mrs. Malaprop, for example? Why does that one grab you?