Mine is simply the title of a semi-obscure sci fi movie, Cherry 2000
For those of you in the know, all I have to say is “Cheese sandwich…pretty!” 
Yeah, definitely…answers.
As for a straight answer from me, while there is a Dutch branch to my family tree (one of my great-grandfathers had a Dutch name), I’m of mostly Scottish and Irish extraction and I do, in fact, own (and wear) a couple of kilts plus appropriate accessories. Plus the belted plaid I wear on those rare occasions we can afford a day at a RenFest, and its accessories.
Yeah right.
I got a bunch of football players, misfits, old men, and lunatics to play on an industrial league basketball team. During our first practice it was eveident that it was a team of Toads. We were short, wide, and slow. We voted to name the team, The Toads. Since I was the founding Foretoad, the guys started calling me Toad, or, DaToad.
The Toad Motto: Everything to excess, except moderation
The Toad Cheer: Give me a T! Gma O! Gma A! Gma D! What’s that smell? Yay Toads!
Oh, and in our first year we had a perfect record: 0-20
The second season we were 1-19 (The game we won was by forfeit.)
What was the question? I just saw someone I thought was you.
An elastic material whose acoustic tensor is symmetric for every direction in every configuration is called hyperelastic. Such materials have a stored-energy functional. I just like the sound of the word.
I have recently been contemplating changing my username to either The Waco Kid or El Chupacabra. For the latter, I would like to add Spanish-style exclamation points.
St. Urho
Also, my grandpa’s name was Urho.
. . .
Gee, I forgot the real reason for this thread.
Sean - In 1985 I was assigned to my first ship. 30 guys in my division, and 6 of us had the same first name. A friend started calling me Sean, because my “real name isn’t Irish enough.” (Well, yes, it is. But thanks anyway, Dave.) It stuck throughout my five years there but nowhere else. But it was so pervasive while there that even ten years later, I’d run into people with whom I was stationed, and they’d still call me by that.
Factotum - On my last ship, I was assigned as the Technical Assistant for my division, until I was replaced by an Ensign who got fired from his Division Officer post. I became a kind of utility fielder then, handling things that needed CPO-level attention but didn’t fit normally into the way we were set up. One of the LPOs in the division started calling me The Factotum, which is a damn accurate description for what I was doing.
I don’t use either of these names anymore, but needed something for here.
I first began to use this pseudo about 20 years ago, on a board on the Wayne State University mainframe.
I chose it because I think tigers are the most beautiful animal of all, and because I am also fond of the poem by William Blake, an immensely gifted poet.
“The Tyger” is among the minority of his poems which simply celebrate. He had a discerning eye for social justice and (ISTM) a preoccupation with issues of theodicy, as well as enormous poetic and artistic talents. IMO, it is not inappropriate to think of him as the Harlan Ellison of his time (not that I’m the greatest fan of Harlan’s, but one must recognize gifts when one sees them, and both were undoubtedly endowed with stellar talents; Blake, however, had artistic talent to match his writing talent, and was not always in noir mode); here’s a poem that I think will illustrate my point. An electronic collection of his works (complete with his illustrations) is available here. A brief biography is found here.
I am the only person who chose a name more or less at random?
Mine is a little bit of a play on words… er… letters.
Made more sense when the software let me type my name as CLAYTON_e
I explained it once a long time ago… and I don’t feel like doing it now.
(That should drive a few people nuts)
That is unacceptable! You must have a secret origin story to explain your Doper powers! I’ll make one up for you…
One day you were eating your favorite dessert, tapioca pudding, when suddenly it became watery and inedible. You used your latent powers unconsciously to summon dextrin out of your neighbor’s processed food cache and add it to your pudding, thus restoring it to normal. Henceforth you would be known as Tapioca Dextrin!
"Don’t let him see you, stay out of the sun, and be yourselves!
My screen name was inspired partly by the book The Face on the Milk Carton. In the book, near the beginning there’s a part where the main character, Jane Johnson, is always trying to make her name less plain, and it eventually evolves in Jayyne Jonstone. The first part of my name was inspired from that (Jayn isn’t one of the permutations she comes up with).
The second part of my name I dropped on when I used the name for a character in a story I was writing in English class a few years ago. I wanted a common surname that started with the letter N. Thus, Jayn Newell.
The story crashed, but I adopted it as an online name. Should you happen to see this screenname anywhere else, say hi. Odds are it’s me.
I named myself at random only to find out at a later date that for several years, I was in a band of the same name.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Pretty standard, really. Brother killed by ninja of the White Lotus clan, I vowed revenge, blah blah blah… Anyway, long story short, I wind up saying “Look! Ninjas!” a lot. Then I kill them. Nothing exciting.
I need a drink.
I’ve said this every time we’ve had a thread on the subject:
William Quinn was the first elected Governor of the State of Hawaii. When I was a member of a board on Hawaiian politics (the only non-Hawaiian member, in fact), I used it as a screen name.
Came up with it last year when I was signing up for another board. Tried naming myself “Flipside” (after a comic strip I was trying to get syndicated at the time), but it was taken. So I became “Flipstrip.”