I Just Gotta Know

[teddy_radiator]

Okay. January is practically a wrap, the cold and snow and wind and general post-holiday yuck has everyone a bit blah, and posts and SSHG_Promptfest comments are thin on the ground. So I want to ask a question that may possibly get me in trouble, but hey, I've known you all for four-going-on-five years so I have no shame.

How did you get your LJ Nickname? Where did it come from? I realise some of you use your actual names, but sometimes when I see an unusual one, or one that is especially cryptic, I think, "Where did they get their name?"

Okay, here's the chance to fess up. How did you come up with that fascinating name? What does your LJ Nickname mean? How is it significant to you?

Discuss.

Comments

[benevolntgoddes.livejournal.com]

"Bitch Goddess" seemed a bit excessive so I went the other way. What about yours?

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

You're not a Bitch Goddess at all! ;)

TheHubs had a friend with two children, and he gave them each a rabbit. He told them they could name theirs anything they wanted. The little girl, who was around seven, named hers Fluffy straight away. The little boy, who was around four, took a little longer and gave it a bit more thought. He finally announced that he wanted to name his rabbit after his two favourite things - his teddy bear and the radiator in his room that kept him warm.

Teddy Radiator is the name of a bunny somewhere in England. I adopted it because it sounded sort of jump jive and steampunk and suited me far better than my real name, which I despise. I told my mother that, if I could afford it, I'd legally change my name. She replied, "Well, Teddy suits you. I didn't want to name you xxxxx anyway. That was your aunt's idea. It was the name of a popular soap opera character at the time."

So Teddy Radiator it is.

[writcraft]

Mine is a play on 'witchcraft' and 'writing'. Witchcraft for HP because it's the only fandom I'm actively involved with and 'writing' because of writing fic :D

It's a bit crap, but I like it. I see someone else has asked about yours, so I'll wait to see what you respond there rather than asking twice.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I like it! And now I'll ask another question - what is the significance of your userpic?

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

 Mine comes from a line in this Tori Amos song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBJzLL_kJ3A)which fits my personality a little too well, that and I want to be Tori Amos when I grow up. :P

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

She's pretty awesome - I wish I had her crazy songwriting skills.

[irishredlass.livejournal.com]

You know me and you ask this question. Tell you what I am answering with a question. How do you think I came up with my lj name?

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

This is true! But there are some names I don't know. You are one of the few exceptions to the rule! ♥

[eoforyth.livejournal.com]

When I first met my hubby he was involved with a re enactment group, so when I started attending with him I had to come up with a persona. I chose a period I was already interested in then used a variation of my birth surname for my 9C Saxon woman.

Everett is a variant of Everard, Old English Eoforard, meaning 'as hard/tough as the wild boar' (much more complimentary then than now). As the suffix -ard is masculine I changed it to -ryth, which is feminine and means endurance/strength. This is my modern take BTW, not a genuine name.

As most of the people I originally knew on LJ were from the re enactment group and filkers who all knew me by that name, I stuck with it.

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

Did you go by another name for a while or on another site?

[madeleone]

Long story. This is why I have several different pen-names at different archives. Before I ever joined LJ, I was magdalena at Granger Enchanted and couple of other now defunct archives. Then I joined another archive but Magdalena was taken so I dropped the 'd' and eventually became magalena at TPP and fanfic.net.

When I joined LJ I decided to go a different route and chose a name with more personal meaning to me. My mom's middle name was Madeleon, (although she always pronounced it like Madelyn, to me it always looked more like
Mad-eh-lee-own). I added the e to the end to personalize it a bit, madeleone, and in my mind I think of it as mad-eh-lee-own-ee. The ending is a bit like Hermione's, although I hadn't thought of that when I chose it.

I'm still magdalena at GE, magalena at TPP and FF.net and madeleone everywhere else. It's a bit confusing to have different pen-names but just too confusing to try to change it all now. :)

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

I've shared this with you before, but not the flist. St. Gulik is one of the five apostles in the Discordian religion, and is also the messenger of the goddess. Discordianism hit me at just the right time in my life, teaching me that one should resist blind acceptance of religious (and other kinds of) dogma. Every single one of my internet aliases references Discordianism, except the ones that don't.

[delphipsmith]

Every single one of my internet aliases references Discordianism, except the ones that don't.

:)

[toblass.livejournal.com]

Toblass = Tobee + Lola.

Tobee and Lola were our cats. They've since passed on to Kitty Heaven, but I still miss them, especially Lola since she was my kitty for nearly 15 years.

I honestly can't remember how I came up with the "lass" at the end of the name.

Anyhow, Toblass is my fandom name. Ash, dA, AO3, LJ...that's me. :D

[celestialbeing1.livejournal.com]

Maybe because you are a lovely lass ;)

[bloodcult.livejournal.com]

Mine is a joke about the lack of empiricism in traditional psychology.

[delphipsmith]

Years ago I fell in with a bunch of very smart, very funny women who invented a college called Ho State University (a bit like the Sith Academy), as a place for us to "live" and "work" and act as a setting for the very cracktastic fanfic we all enjoyed writing. It was originally populated solely by us and various rescued Star Wars men (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Xani, etc.) Gradually people brought in characters from other fandoms -- when I was "hired" as IT Coordinator ("The IT Girl") I brought Lucius and Worf -- as well as a few original ones (e.g., Cal the Padawannabe). We don't write as much as we used to, but we still dabble occasionally when the mood strikes us :)

Anyway, the name I chose for my HSU persona was Delphi (because I've always liked the name; it makes me think of the Delphic oracle) and Psmith as an homage to P. G. Wodehouse's "Leave it to Psmith."

So when LJ came along nursedarry (a founding member of HSU along with ladyoneill) insisted that I needed an account: "You'll love it!" she said. "There's fanfic!" she said. "There's nice/funny/smart people!" she said. Well, I dawdled around until she lost patience and set one up for me using my HSU name. I became intrigued and quickly discovered that she had been right on all counts, so...here I am!

[nursedarry.livejournal.com]

Even though Darry has since nearly abandoned LJ, seeing in most of the fandoms she play in have moved to Tumblr... But hey!

[voxangelus.livejournal.com]

Mine came from a game of Upwords and my own conceit. I've been using it since way before fandom, though. I ended up registering at OWL and TPP as Peppermint, though (sharp and refreshing?).

[blueartemis07.livejournal.com]

The very first account I set up online was with ebay. Who was helpful with it. What color are your eyes: blue. What is the name of your favorite pet? Artemis.

Artemis was a heck of a cat. She has gone on to kitty heaven but I still miss her.

Places where blue artemis or blueartemis were taken, I added 07 for some unknown reason, it may have been the year.

And there you go.

[hbart.livejournal.com]

What a great question! I've often wondered this about the folks in fandom. I'm afraid mine is boring. The first online spot I signed up was TPP. I was whining to my husband about how long it was going to take for the next HP book to come out, and he told me to shut up and go read fanfic. I thought that was an awful idea because I thought (very incorrectly, I might add) that fanfic was lame stories written by never-gonna-make-it-wannabes. So, because I was only going to sign in a few times to prove this to my husband, I just used my login from work so it would be easy to remember. Now, I really don't like my user name, and had I known I'd be hanging out years later, I'd have been a bit more creative.

I'm glad you shared yours. I've always wondered, but I never would have come up with that in a million years. If I ever have another pet, I'm naming him in that fashion. Although, it might be a bit embarrassing when I take him to the vet and have to register him as PizzaNap. :)

[delphipsmith]

I was whining to my husband about how long it was going to take for the next HP book to come out, and he told me to shut up and go read fanfic.

LOL! Wise man :)

[alabastard.livejournal.com]

Someone I knew once called me the alabastard and we all looked at each other, knowing this would be my username for all things.

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, my hair was red and reached just past my shoulders. I read a really cheesy novel called "Ghost Fox" about a girl with long red hair who was captured by Native Americans. They considered her hair to be like a fox tail, so the name stuck with me.

At Uni, as a Dj, I was "The Midnight Fox", and when I went to a friend's play and booked the tickets anonymously, I booked them as "Reynolds", because "Reynard" is French for "Fox".

And then, in 1996, I joined Devilbunnies and needed an anti-bunny name for my character. I became Reynardo, and have been that on the Web ever since. Yes, that's right - nearly 20 years. That's scary...

(Although not every Reynardo is me. And amusingly, some of them think that their gmail is reynardo@.. Mr R, I have your hotel bookings, your credit card pickup date and your conference info.)

I'm Mary West on the Pit of Voles and a couple of other places, because way back when, there was a "Find your Porn Name" meme. I won't give all the details, because I used *that* name to write porn Adult Entertainment Fiction, but a variation of it is Mary West, so that's become my writing nom de plume.

On TPP, for some reason I decided instead to use "Annabun", which was the name of one of my rabbit characters on Devilbunnies, and afterwards my Clothie Tank on WoW. Occasionally I use another name which I shan't reveal here, which is the name of an ill-fated D&D character of mine. Yes, I have a slew of aliases!

And my hair - is still red, and now reaches my knees. A fox tail indeed.

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

I didn't know your hair is that long! Heeee. I'm trying to get mine back down there, but it's decently past my bum again after the trim it needed last year :) It sounds so lovely!

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

Gelsey Dutchwood was my original "pen" sort of name, and it's basically my name hidden in it. But "gelsey" means "jasmine" as a name in Italian, which is, of course, me :) Dutchwood is pretty much defunct now but is a smashing together, in a way, of my last name and my stepdad's last name, though I won't be using it now, I don't believe.

But I go by Gelsey everywhere, pretty much, and I answer to it as my name at cons, though I don't mind being called by Jasmine or variants thereof either :D It depends on what people want to call me!

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

Mimi has been my nickname from childhood. I stopped using it in favor of my given name for a long while, then started using it again around the time I got a computer. Manderly is the name that my husband and I have given to our "estate", LOL. When I had to pick user names for various accounts, I wanted one that used Mimi, I didn't want to follow it with a number, and it had to be different enough that no one else would have it, because I wanted to use it with ALL my accounts. I thought "Mimi of Manderly", or MimiManderly. I like the fact that it is beyond fandom, so that as my tastes change and evolve, I don't have to either change my username or keep using one that I've outgrown.

[delphipsmith]

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again..."

[smallbrownfrog.livejournal.com]

All my online names/presences have been odd combinations of simple words that I like. Mostly that's just that I dislike getting a name with a number in it. (Although I do truly like frogs.)

[bonsaibetz.livejournal.com]

Bonsai has been a hobby of mine since 1997. Betz is my nickname in RL and pen name. Since "Betz" was already grabbed on LJ and I wanted something representative and a little catchy, and different, bonsabetz came into being.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

When Subversa bullied me into opening an LJ, I was a bit stumped for a pen name. I looked around my room and my eye met those of Richard III - I have a poster of Shakespeare's Richard that has been on my wall in every place I've lived since I was 16. My first almost-fandom experience was with the Richard 3rd Society. Both Richards in one. As "RichardGloucester" was too long, DickGloucester it was. I have the full version on the archives. And people here just started calling me "Dicky", which I like a lot.

My icon (drawn by me and animated by smallship1) comes from an insult thrown at Richard by Queen Margaret in the play.

[sunnythirty3.livejournal.com]

It's a long story. Back in 2000, my sister in Australia wanted to use this new-fangled thing called hotmail to chat with me. I had to create an email identity. At the time, I had not long read Julian May's Saga of the Exiles and Galactic Milieu trilogies. In the latter books were the four entities of the Lylmik Supervisory body, who had weird but funky names: Homologous Trend, Asymptotic Essence, Eupathic Impulse, and Neotic Concordance. (just had to find the book and look that up!) I decided weird and funky was the way to go, so I chose variantsun, later shortened to sunny when I started playing card games online with the same bad influence sister. Much later, in 2007, I discover HP fanfiction at Ashwinder, and tried to use sunny as my user name. It was taken, so I tried sunny1, sunny2, sunny3, and eventually got pissed off and typed in sunny33. Yay! I had a name! I've used sunny33 or sunnythirty3 ever since in all sorts of places. :D

And the icon is a reference to my last SSHG fic. ;)

[lynnylou.livejournal.com]

Mine is a nickname my Mom gave me a child and still uses once in while to this day. My middle name is Lynn so it plays off that.

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

Thanks for asking this question, Teddy! I'm enjoying reading all the responses, some of which I had wondered about myself.

[delphipsmith]

Ditto!!

LJ Name

[droxys-dad.livejournal.com]

I really didn't have much of a choice....

Re: LJ Name

[delphipsmith]

:D

[susanmarier.livejournal.com]

Well since mine is SusanMarieR I think it's pretty obvious. Kinda. My ff.net is SusanMarieS which really is my name, but when I was posting in LJ I had been making my journal under SusanMarieS and replies to fan fictions under SusanMarieR. When I decided to do fan art I decided the fan fiction authors would recognize SusanMarieR more than SusanMarieS. Plus, real life people I know would have to search just a bit more. Not that it's that hard to make the connection. Anyway, the r is just something that made since in my head. Like the difference between. Review and reviewer.