Poll coming shortly.
We’ve had lots of threads asking people to explain the specific source of their user names.
I’m interested in a more general approach, so I am offering a few choices about what, in general, was the source of your user name. If I get a lot of “Other”, then I guess I didn’t do the poll very well, but in that case please suggest a category that I missed.
My user name is from a Movie or play, not fantasy. What’s yours?
Roddy
Mine was a word used by a co-worker, said in such a way that always made me laugh. (he was a funny guy)
At the time, I had never really heard it before. I did not know it had a particular meaning. But it was a word I remembered, so I started using it as an ID.
I picked ‘made it up for no particular reason’ but I did have a particular reason. I’m a big girl.
Something I just made up (for no particular reason).
I think bats are very cool (anything that eats mosquitoes by the thousand is cool in my book) but I wanted something that was neither my name or anything close to it nor had anything to do with a hobby or interest of mine. A blank slate sort of name.
Source; I don’t know. Maybe I’d just read something about bats, or been outside listening to them swoop and squeak. I can’t remember now.
Mine’s just a play on the old “Got Milk?”
Some event or condition relevant to my life.
I’m a “guy” that lives near a “bay” in a largely “spanish-speaking” area.
I picked “game”. I was close to “just made it up”, but it wasn’t for “no particular reason”.
Back in my 20s, I was using “D-Dog” as my handle for various things, but that was rather generic and I was hardly the only wannabe gangsta out there using it.
Then in March 1999, the MMORPG Everquest came out. I had been able to use “D-Dog” in Ultima Online (“D-Dog of Trinsic” to be exact), but EQ wouldn’t allow a hyphen in the name, so I made the closest approximation I could think of: “Deedog”.
My character was a half-elf and started in the tree city of Kelethin. Anyone who played EQ back then already knows exactly what happened next: my first step was into a void, and I immediately plummeted out of the tree to my death.
When I respawned, I had no idea at all where I could find my corpse to recover my newbie starting items, so I just deleted the character and made a new one. However, the game still said the name “Deedog” as taken, so I had to come up with something else. Since the character was going to be an elf, I came up with a name that was sort of elf-ish: Dahnlor.
After that, I started to use “Dahnlor” whenever I couldn’t use “D-Dog”, which turned out to be pretty close to 100% of the time.
The name is supposed to be pronounced “Dan-Lore”, and the “h” is meant to be purely decorative, but since I was using it in a text medium, it took a long time before I realized everyone else was pronouncing it as “Don-Lore”. Oh well.
Other: medical trivia.
I like collecting random facts.
Mine is from a science fiction story so I hesitated between the fantasy and all other fiction options and eventually went for the latter.
Something from my life. This spring we had kestrels nesting in a dead tree in our yard. They provided us much entertainment, especially the fledglings. I read up on them and learned that they are common in my area, but I had never seen one before.
Attacklad misspoke during one of his mad superhero plays. It was meant to be an attack from some other higher dimension, but at seven he wasn’t real up to speed on dimensions.
I picked “History,” even though I am the modern incarnation of my namesake. I don’t have the horse’s tail, but I am a horse’s ass.
I picked “other” because mine is from a TV show. Just in case anyone isn’t familiar with The Venture Bros.
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0039588/
I kind of sound like her when I get a sinus infection…
Mine is a reference from my High School days.
“Game”: name of a major bad-guy NPC in RPG storylines I was (still am) running.
But earlier than that I liked the name because of the ambiguity as to whether the “Angel of the Abyss” is a loyal servant, or a rebel / fallen angel.
I chose “Fantasy book or movie” even though Little Nemo in Slumberland was a comic strip. It has no particular personal significance. The only reason I picked it as a user name was because I happened to be reading a collection of the strips when I wanted to change names.
I chose it because I’m deedee and I know it.
“Other” - the webcomic Schlock Mercenary.
Other. Song title.
I picked “history”, though I suppose fantasy book could also apply. I wanted a username I wouldn’t forget…