Mine is nationality and a nod to Middle Earth, since I live in western Europe.
I remember that conversation! Count me among those surprised by the palindrome. That’s pretty cool. It was nice meeting you.
I did this a long time ago:
Still applicable.
Lucy
I hung around with some old friends, and we called ourselves Knavettes bc we liked this biker bar. We had a big discussion (influenced by alcohol), of what a modern day Knave would be. We decided that we were Knavettes since we seemed to have a need to raise hell. Not that we ever did, but we pretended. I just use Knavette and the year of my birth. For awhile I was just plain Knavette but had to change it bc for some reason I could not access my old name (had to recreate a new account). Most, if not all, of my crowd were teachers, nurses, librarians. So not really Knavette material, but everyone has their dark side.
One of the most amazing moments of my life was Hawkwind playing Master Of The Universe. Nothing to do with He-Man.
Yeah, I’m far from an artistic type but even at the ripe old age of 16 it appealed to me too!
Her name is “Dorothea” (she goes by “Thea”) and she chose a lowercase Theta: θ and has used that for the last 50-some years.
Mine turned out to be far more useful than I’d realized, as a branding exercise: for most of my career, even before the Internet, I’d meet people in my end of the computing world and at some point they’d say “Oh, you’re phsiii!” I didn’t know the term “branding” when I chose it, unless we were talking about cows…
I wanted a name that was both pretentious and ridiculous. Hence sciurophobic, “afraid of squirrels”
It started as an inside joke. Every time I’d see a critter I’d say “Ohh it’s so cute and furry.” I am also secretly a superhero who was bitten by a radioactive lemur who has the power to control animals: I am Cute and furryman!
I used to consider myself a Furry but after seeing videos of Furry conventions I figure I’m more of a poser than anything. 
The SICU I worked in had 4 different sections, or “suites” which we all started calling “pods”. Open heart surgery patients went into the A pod and I was one of the core group who worked there a lot. Hence, Apodder. 
I’m a Marx Brothers fan. I have every book by or about them, down to first editions of Groucho’s rare 1930s books. A special favorite was the autobiography Harpo Speaks (actually written by Rowland Barber). One of his best anecdotes involved being the first American entertainer invited to the USSR in the 1930s. The book showed a poster of his name written in Cyrillic lettering.
He interpreted that as Exapno Mapcase. I just grabbed that as a screen name, forgetting how difficult it would be to remember and spell.
My non-jokey answer: I’m a longtime Star Wars fan, and in the early years of my Internet presence (I first signed up on the SDMB in 2000), I tended to use Star Wars names for my user names.
The “65” part of it is my birth year.
Wow. Exapno_Mapcase. I thought maby you had something to do with maps.
I have a 1967 Oldsmobile 98 convertible that I love.
Sadly, it’s got a spun bearing and so it’s been a couple of years since I drove it. I need to rebuild the engine and put an OD transmission in it. I’ll get to it one of these days.
Old Olds
Well, I got it, anyway.
It’s an expression in the Dagaare language of Ghana that is used as an evening greeting, and literally means “the place is cool”. (zi = place, maa = cool, ne = is)
I had just discovered Discworld shortly before I discovered the SDMB. Tried several different character names, stuck with the first one that wasn’t already taken.
I expect that most of you know that Hari Seldon is the name of the psychohistorian in Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (which has been extended by two prequels and two sequels so is now a septology). See also Don Kingsbury’s Psychohistorical Crisis set in the same universe (under assumed names).
My family used to have a Standard Poodle named Ponch, and I also loved watching CHiPs (the California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop show featuring Ponch and Jon). The 8 is there because Ponch1 through Ponch7 were apparently already taken when I signed up for a different website.
It seemed friendlier than Bakunin.
The was an old bulletin board discussing Shakespeare, which let you choose a username for each post. I was sneering at a Shakespeare conspiracy theorist and wanted to use the name Reality Check. I typoed it as “Reality Chuck.” I liked it and when I joined the SDMB, I used that.