What's the origin of your name?

[Andytizer 269]

Andytizer - back in primary school, no one could pronounce my surname Tsai. It's actually a very common surname in Taiwan, but it's spelled a bit oddly in the romanisation of Chinese sounds in the UK. In Cantonese, I would be called 'Choi'. Anyway kids at school started calling me Tizer, after the softdrink.. and that kind of came together with my first name to become the online handle 'Andytizer'.

 

I'm going to guess a few others:

JRWR - I already know this one, he can tell you himself

Newmansan - obviously this is a reference to Seinfeld, the avatars speak for themselves - but how did the -san suffix come about?

Garrett - this is either your real name, or a reference to Thief

[Newmansan 30]

You pretty much got it right Andy. The -san comes from the fact that I was heavy into anime back in highschool.

[Nicereddy 109]

My best friend's username at the time was "nicegreeny" and my favorite color is red, clearly I'm not the best at original names. It's stuck with me because it'd be too much work to change it now.

[Andytizer 269]

My best friend's username at the time was "nicegreeny" and my favorite color is red, clearly I'm not the best at original names. It's stuck with me because it'd be too much work to change it now.

 

Sometimes names just stick and it's easier just to keep it the same :D.

[Jeth Calark 12]

Mine has a history.

 

When I was a kid, Star Wars and LEGO was my life. My best friend was just as big a Star Wars fan as I was, so whenever he visited me in the summer for two weeks, we would play outside all day every day with those $7 plastic lightsabers. Naturally, we were Jedi undertaking dangerous Jedi missions using the woods and the treehouse I had as props and environment (I lived in a rural area). We also needed Jedi names, so we unimaginatively stole two names from my (then) new copy of Star Wars: The Essential Chronology book. I chose "Arca Jeth".

 

Over the next few years, I inverted the name to "Jeth Arca" before dropping the last part in favor of a made up one. Except I would forget my new last name by next time, make up one to replace it, and forget that one next time. Did that several times until I hit on "Jeth Calark" and it stuck. So it's basically my Jedi alter-ego.

 

When I got my first email account (and thus my first internet account of any kind), I used "Jeth Calark" as my username. Been doing the same ever since. It's become less "Jedi" and more just plain "alter ego" over the years, but I do get a very wide grin every time I'm playing Battlefront II using that name. Probably because my little circle of gaming friends originally met me on Skype and thought my real name WAS "Jeth Calark", thus they still call me "Jeth" all the time out of habit despite knowing my real name.

 

 

I do find it a little fascinating that many of us seem to use childhood or high school nicknames for internet usernames.

[Pendragon 6]

In high school, I was reading a lot of King Arthur stories, I found a lot of personal meaning in them. In gaming, I used different names all the time, I was changing names about once a week or so. Never really getting close to a community. I ended up being recruited into a clan, and having to pick a name. I didn't want to use one of my other names, in case the clan didn't work out, so I wanted to pick something new and distinct. So I turned to King Arthur for inspiration. I didn't want to use King_Arthur as a name, it sounded ridiculous, wanted something that sounded knightly but not silly. I ended up picking Pendragon, and vaguely telling people it was after Uther Pendragon. It was also a nod to my love of dragons, and slightly similar to my actual name.

 

I never thought the name would stick, I thought it would be something I used for a few weeks. That was over a decade ago. It just got to be another name I used, I got comfortable with it, even if people started using the nickname "Penny" on me. I have since forgotten those old legends, I don't read them as much anymore. I've used many other names since then, but I do come back to this persona every time. Lately I've tried going public and not using an Internet persona, but this one still sticks with me. I've been Pendragon for a long time now, and I expect I will stay Pendragon for much longer.

[Mestaris 2]

Mine came about through my somewhat failure.

 

According to Cognitive Ability Tests, I am an all round genius. However, around the age of 12, my school found that my English levels were not doing as well as my science and maths, and my English teacher suggested I find a way to improve my writing with other people.

So I took to the internet. I got into forum roleplay- most of which ended in Skype chats that I regret now I know Microsoft record and read them- and Mestaris was one of the names I used quite frequently; as I often hate picking regular names.

 

And here we are today :P

[MichaelBuble 2]

Michael Bublé

[Suicide machine 53]

Well, story time.

 

When I was like 15 years old, I was listening to a lot of Slipknot. I used to love that band and for a long time, friends just called me Sid - which was a reference to Sidney George Wilson, who is a DJ in Slipknot. Then they years of "Liceum" came (usually you go there, when you're like 16 and it least for 3 years). Feeling lonely and having only few friends in Liceum, I started looking for even more brutal music and since Slipknot wasn't creating anything, I just got tired of listening the same 3 albums over and over again, so I changed nickname to Mr. Suicide. This was related to my playing Half-Life 2's mod - Synergy, where I was really good at playing puzzle and jumping maps. Obviously, to save time, I had "kill" command binded to k key - hence why, I was using this nickname. Year later, I changed school and started listening to a much calmer band - Pain. Imagine moving from a class with 35 people, to a class where there is 11 people and one of which is your brother. The life got so much less frustrating. That however, didn't change the fact, that usually I felt like people just understand me. And one day, sitting alone in a room, listening to Pain, in a song Suicide Machine I caught a line:

 

Suicide Machine - locked up in this cage
Suicide Machine - I don't understand

and instantly I thought about using as my nickname.

And that's how it stayed. Then MLP came and I kind of started using Pony Machine on Steam, but - since I considered it as short term fascination - I decided to stay with a nickname Suicide Machine, where I can.

 

So that's it. Oh and avatar comes from a clip for Suicide Machine.

[TheFroggynator 2]

I used to be called (in free translation) Froggy when I was a kid. I guess I was an ugly kid. TheFroggynator just seemed better to me. Though I am not a fan of the Terminator series, that's where it took the idea from. And it is pretty original too. I've never seen variations of it on others. I'm sure there may be a few somewhere over there, but I am not making a case out of it.

 

So it's a legacy, spice with originality and that's that.

[Tallkido 4]

Im teacher kept calling me tall kid in school :D

and Tallk I Do since im quiet

[PecanPie 7]

I really like pecan pie. That's about it.

[Andytizer 269]

PecanPie, on 21 Aug 2013 - 09:08 AM, said:

I really like pecan pie. That's about it.

My god that pecan pie looks good, I haven't had my lunch.

[PecanPie 7]

My god that pecan pie looks good, I haven't had my lunch.

 

Well too bad, that's my pie :3

[KingCyrus20 2]

KingCyrus20 comes from the fact that my middle name is Cyrus, and I have strong Persian ancestry. 20 is my favorite number, so I've taken to adding that to the end.