How did you come up with your account name?

[Zephyr.5382]

I don't think there's been a topic like this before--at least, not that I remember, or that I could find after a few pages of forum and google searches.

Anyway, like the title says: how did you come up with your name? I've been using the name "Zephyr" at least as far back as 1997. I think it started with Need For Speed II, but then I would use it in Quake II deathmatch because I played a kind of nimble, slippery, snipe-you-with-a-railgun-when-you-least-expect-it style. And in every game since, I've used the name and picked the "fast" character and/or used a nimble playstyle like I did in Q2DM.

[Ashen.2907]

Ashen was the name of my Ranger main in GW1.

[Randulf.7614]

Gandalf was taken

[Warscythes.9307]

I mained a warrior endurance scythe in GW1 for quite awhile

[DexterousGecko.6328]

i think it was an autogenerated xbox live name or something, can't remember.

[Ariurotl.3718]

It's my account name everywhere, picked by a random generator. I occasionally regret how unpronounceable it is.

[Donari.5237]

When GW2 was announced, the GW2 roleplayers forum was formed.  My WoW friend who'd gotten me hyped for GW2 (I was never into GW1) founded a guild that initially only existed on that forum and then on its own forum as the betas began.  My friend and I worked up a combined backstory for our two characters.  Mine was the third iteration of the same character type, tweaked game to game to match the setting.  In WoW he was Fashenal, blood elf swashbuckler, a seasoned sailor merchant/privateer, and while he was a womanizer he kept to one at a time, having had enough years of life to learn some wisdom.  I reworked him in a tabletop game of Birthright, this time as Donari Malo di Bette, a young man fleeing a city where he'd been caught with the wrong person's spouse to end up in the newly formed little kingdom we players were running (he became the spymaster there, but continued to D'Artagnan his way through the populace).  Come GW2 he became Donari Mal di Bette thanks to the 19 character limit for names.  And, yes, a womanizer, now with a massive ego but with plenty of charm to soften it.  His story's run its course now; I have other alts getting rp time and I think I've lost his "voice."

But as everyone I was playing with at launch knew me as Donari, it just made sense to set up my GW2 account under that name.

[Linken.6345]

My first 3 letters of surname followed by first 3 letters of my name

[Rogue.8235]

I have a patch of white (complete absence of any pigmented cells) hair.  The nickname has been around since my high school years.  Yes, it grows back completely white after being shaven off.

 

[vicky.9751]

it's short for my name. was too lazy to think of something like "goblinslayer92183023"

Edited December 8, 2022 by vicky.9751

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I started playing in 2012 around official launch. Back in those days the game was no longer in beta but things did not go very smoothly. After purchasing the game, I have tried to register an account. But that did not work. Over and over the same error.  Before I've purchased GW2, I have played SW:ToR for a few months. That game did not allow two people having the same names, so I assumed this would be the case here as well.

As the game was just launched, I've expected to find a name that was not already taken within 10-20 minutes. But no matter what name I have entered, error error error. I knew from other MMORPGs that there are 'smart' people who reserve the most iconic character names with dummy chars (e. g. Legolas, Gandalf, Sephiroth, Luthien, ... etc.), so maybe it was just bad luck? More minutes into the guessing-challenge I was quite furious. Not a single name was accepted so far, always the error.

So I have reached that one point where you question yourselves "How far can I go? How far do I have to go?" and I have decided to type in the most complicated combination of letters I could think of.
-
What I did not know at that point: GW2 allowed people having the same account name, as they give the unique addition with the 4-digit numbers. The error I have received was caused by a bug on the website itself. During this unstable time, it was a mere gamble to register an account. There have been short time-windows of a few minutes where the registration worked. And on the other side hours where nothing worked.
-
Anyway, I had this special combination of upper- and lower-case letters, so complicated no human being would dare to name their account like that. I hit the switch and in that very moment, the website decided to work again.

A combination of lack of information and impatience. Lesson learned. I got used to it over the years and I do not want to change.

[Sarius.9285]

the book Erebos

[patton the great.7126]

I'm a big fan of the movie green inferno and unfortunately Darth Vader and sadly, Scipio Africanus were already taken so here we are.  

[Cronospere.8143]

Was a real fan of red alert 2, but my english wasn't so good back then. 

So thinking the the Allied weapon was called Cronospere (speaking it as Crow-No-Spear) instead of Chronosphere. A pure young non native speaker's mistake. But i kept the name for some reason for every game i played. 

Although i usually am referred to as Lord Crono these days. Or just Crono. 

Edited December 8, 2022 by Cronospere.8143

[Danikat.8537]

I've been going by Danikat since about 2001 or 2002. My main character in Ultima Online was called Danielle but I didn't want to just use her name (or maybe it was taken?). I didn't want to just use my name - Katy - either, so I mashed the two together and I've been using it ever since. I'm far from the only person to go by Danikat online but luckily I seem to have different interests to the others so it's rarely a problem for me to use it.

The one time I wanted something different I got as far as "I don't want a screen name that references an RP character, I want something that's just about me...Just_Me, that'll do for now" and then I got stuck with that for over a decade, there's still people and places who mainly/only know me by that name. It's not all bad, I met my husband and some very good friends on those forums but if I'd known how long I'd be using that name I'd have picked something more creative.

It's funny, I can spend ages coming up with character names and always settle on something that reflects their backstory and personality or appearence, but I hate coming up with screen names for myself.
 

46 minutes ago, Rogue.8235 said:

I have a patch of white (complete absence of any pigmented cells) hair.  The nickname has been around since my high school years.  Yes, it grows back completely white after being shaven off.

 

My husband is the same. He's got brown hair with a white patch in the middle. He got a less complimentary nickname in school, implying an unfortunate encounter with a bird. But since he grew it long it looks like highlights rather than a patch, which is better. Now some people think he dyes it on purpose to look like that.

[Gehenna.3625]

Way back when I wrote a song for my band called "Eyes Of Gehenna". So that's where my account name comes from.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Gehenna.3625

[Wolfshade.9251]

Picked it up during my dark and edgy teen phase. Kept it and used it (or variations of it) for every game/forum/whatever else since then. I'm more used to friends calling me by this, than by my actual name by now.

[Vyr.9387]

Originally short for "Vyraílyan", my Sin'dorei-turned-Forsaken mage main's third (?) name during Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King after my heartstrings started dancing to soundtracks to the rebellion and caused me to come up with something entirely my own, with time I've grown distant from my real life moniker and ultimately from all names linking directly to me because, I feel and think, words don't have any intrinsic merit, whereas my existence is all I'll ever be able to experience this reality through - I am I, and no combination of sounds will even scratch the surface of communicating this I to you.
Yet here I am, am I not.

Likewise a member of the "Raid Boss #1: Naming" club Danikat mentioned, I tend to go the exact opposite route: the name reflecting absolutely nothing of the character because everybody should be able to shape themselves, which is hindered to a great extent by prior associations people already have.

But for me? Would've probably used just V if I could simply because I like the shape.
Haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 yet, either.

Perhaps the desire to have a word for I is there, but the concept evolves more quickly than it can be described, so it never feels fitting?
Or perhaps I merely want the name written in carmine/blood red.

[Drok Kindleshot.1496]

I also got my name from a charr NPC from Gw1 just to pay tribute to that great game.

[Kiof.5710]

I came up with the name Kiof in the summer of 1980 for my first D&D character.  Used in games everywhere on and offline ever since.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Kiof.5710
Forgot to add D&D reason for name.

[Tsakhi.8124]

My user name's origin is kind of boring: It's my real name in Armenian; it means Heather of the fields. XD

[hash.8462]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function

[DanAlcedo.3281]

My favorite bird is the Alcedo atthis.

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Scalacious.4139]

When I started gaming way back as a kid, I chose Scaleo as my name, because it was written on my pc case. From time to time I encountered games, where this name was allready taken, probably because other people had the same pc as me and the same idea, so I tried various word combinations with scaleo + x and for some unknown reason, the one I liked most back then was scaleo + salacious => scalacious. The name was never taken in any game I played since, so I stuck with it 😄

[Dawnbreaker.4901]

I don't get enough sleep.