What does your username mean?

We've got quite a lot of "random" usernames here so I was wondering why did you guys choose the name you did and is there a reason/meaning behind it?

For my part:
I was trying to get my nephews away from videogames for a while by introducing them to the adventures of Indiana Jones. We were watching “The Last Crusade”. At the end of the movie Indy has to overcome certain challenges in order to get to the chamber where the treasure awaits. Each challenge comes with a clue. The clue to the second one is “ONLY THE PENITENT SHALL PASS”. (You’ll have to watch the movie to know what will happen to you if you don’t find out in time what that means….)

As it happens, a few days latter I came across this site, remembered the movie quote and I became "Penitent”.

Dull, I know; my nephews think so too…

Your choice is more interesting than mine. I opted for the beloved pet name - double-dull in my estimation (the name, not the pet). Where does inspiration hide when we need it most??

Long lasting archival paper used in fine editions. Nothing too exciting.

Just my last name. Even less exciting.

I do not believe in Astrology - but my name has an astrological link. My star sign is Gemini. The ruling planet of Gemini is Mercury and the influence of this planet is thought to aid communication. Mercury influenced the name of the corresponding chemical substance - which is also known as Quicksilver. Sounds a bit tenuous, I know, but that's how my thought processes went.

Mine is the protagonist of one of my favorite novels, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper.

To date one of the best books I have had the pleasure of reading. A real cracker!

DeusExLibrus is a play on Deus ex Machina, a latin term roughly translated as "God from the machine". Its a reference to a theater mechanic wherein the main character(s) get into an impossible situation and are saved by some incredibly improbably occurrence. It originates in greek stagecraft, where one of the gods would descend from Olympus to save the day. I have no idea why I used it, as I'm not a theater geek or anything, except I am a religion scholar, and a bibliophile, so I thought it fitting.

> 8

And I am reminded so of Hector's remarkable escape in front of Troy by such heavenly interventions. :-)

Aussies love to extend a short name so for years I've been saying "Just Jim" or "Just Jim will do" in response to "Jimmy", "Jimbo", "Jiminy" etc. Eventually it stuck and people call me "Just Jim". I use it all over the 'net where I don't mind being identified and also use JustJimWillDo where some rotten scoundrel has taken JustJim already. eg @JustJimWillDo on Twitter.

Other, non-FS Devotee*, names are explained here

*ETA: or not necessarily so.

A classic Australian wine that I like came to mind when I had to choose a user name. Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon.

Cheers! (note to others, it is not 2:something am here)

I'm always curious about people's names, too. Mine is pretty dull. I've been interested in photography for as long as I can remember. For years and years, I had wanted an SLR camera, a serious camera. I couldn't afford to buy one until I grew up and got a real job. When I finally got one, the very first picture I took with it was of the night sky with the black outline of tree branches, and among them, a crescent moon and stars. An indigo sky. I'm actually tired of the name at this point, and wish I'd come up with something literary. :)

As in 'Celts', the Gaelic speaking part of Scotland from the past. Celtic also happens to be the world's greatest football team.

> 14 Celtic also happens to be the world's greatest football team.

Which means we share a love for more than just the Folio Society.

Hail Hail.

:-)

>15 LesMiserables:

A book, french-literature, Stevenson enthusiast who is also a Celtic supporting Scot living in Australia. If I'm ever lucky enough to get there again I'm looking you up for a pint!

It seems that you accidentally typed 'Celtic' when you actually meant 'Rangers'. Silly fingers.

>17 justjim:

I'm going to resist an answer to avoid hi-jacking the thread and causing the longest 'off-topic' discussion in the history of this forum! In any case my favourite competition is the European Cup and you wouldn't have much to offer on that one! :-)

I've heard of it!

I always love that old Billy Connolly line, "What year was that? Scotland qualified for the World Cup but didn't make the finals. Shite, that doesn't help!"

/hi-jack

>19 justjim:

Only a Scot would get it - but it's really funny (and sadly true).

We had better leave the thread for it's original subject or we'll annoy people! ;-)

When my former employers introduced an intranet, some local webmasters set up chatrooms (they were soon closed down by order of the Board). One day somebody posted “I wonder how many people are tabbing to and fro between this chatroom and their work.” Well, I was certainly tabbing, my name's Tom, and I'm a cat-worshipper; so I became Tabby Tom.

I like astronomy, so I often pick star names for various usernames and avatars. Betelgeuse is a prominent star in the constellation Orion.

Mine is v boring - the awful log-in I received at university many years ago. I can't remember too many online names/passwords so it doesn't have any of the creativity of others.

informal name_surname ..Afterwards wanted to change it for "privacy".. But LT has suspended this option for the bugs.. So WTF..

I own and ride an Appaloosa horse. I sometimes use my horse's ApHC registered name for some other web IDs.

I have a big round face that glows in the dark.
No, seriously, it just popped into my head on day. I used it on flickr and kept the same when I came here.

When I worked for a large multi-national corporation we were all given user id's for the many IT systems we needed access to rather that use our own names. So for years my login was N11284 for all systems

So now for Internet use I automatically select this when registering for a new site, just select a different password and away we go!

Mine dates way back to the mid-90's; it was my first email/aol screen name. I was, oh 15 or 16, and the Beatles were my favorite band at the time and I was obsessed with Sailor Moon. I know. What can I say, I was a silly teenager. Unfortunately, for various reasons - including laziness, a desire to have all screen names the same, a little nostalgia - I have stuck with it.

My username represents my favorite contemporary novel Texaco and my absolute HATRED of oil companies.

When I went to choose a new username the memory of my last dog buddy came to mind. She was a happy and sweet-tempered little girl, a stray muttling I was keeping until a home was found. The first coupla days I called her Puppy; after the new home fell through and I decided to keep her I tried a new name, I forget what, and she would just cock her head and stare, but when I said 'Puppy' she'd wag her tail and come. When she died at 16 years she had become 'Olepuppy'.

I thought too of our similarities, how I'm getting on a bit, how...well, no, I'm not a girl, and, well no, I've not been accused of being sweet-tempered, well then, 1 of 3 and I know why I loved her.

Gee olepuppy you got me all misty...I contend that there is no love like puppy/dog love.

ummm my name?

30, 31:
The canine/human bond is like no other that exist between humans and their domesticated animals. Perhaps that's because dogs choose to domesticate themselves rather than being forcably domesticated.

When I joined my first internet forum, I was reading an English translation of Les fleur du mal by Charles Baudelaire. One of the poems is called La Masque and is about the polite masks we wear to hide our private griefs. Since a user name is basically a social mask, I lifted two words from the second last stanza:

"Why is she weeping? In her lovely pride
she could've conquered the whole race of man.
What unknown evil harrows her lithe side?"

I'm a huge Nathaniel Hawthorne fan. Since I had just finished reading a YA fantasy called Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood by Meredith Ann Pierce, I decided to reference Tanglewood Tales instead of one of his other works.

When forced to come up with yet another username, I stared at the screen like one.
Just kidding, it's my favourite character from Dickens.

And it's not StuffedTuna as was suggested on one of the cookbook groups?

Another dog lover here. My user name is a combination of nicknames: Hani, who was one of my many canine companions, and Witch, my sister's nickname for me (partially from the way younger sisters think of older ones and partially from my religious beliefs). I just like the way the two sounded together.

Mine is a quote from my favourite Coen brothers film Millers Crossing.

The alternatives were: DarwinTheCat, PipTheCat, OllieTheCat, TikaTheCat, SqueakTheCat, or MoggieTheCat

No, I'm not Mad Cat Lady (although I worry that there is potential for my declining years); that lot goes back to the 1970's.

Mine came about when I first signed up for AOL during the dial up era, I am not very creative so when it came time to my make my screen name, I looked at my cat Mookie sitting on my desk. Oddly there were 1797 other Mookies so I became Mookie1798.

#39 No 'ArghGetOutOfThatYouDamnStupidCat'?

> 41 That has applied to all of them quite frequently.

MIne comes from a combination of Tolkien and Norse imagery. Wormtongue calls Galdalf "Stormcrow", referencing the crow that flies before the storm, and accusing Gandalf of being a harbinger of war. In Norse imagery, a common war flag used was the raven banner, a tribute to Odin. So I combined the two, and I've been StormRaven ever since.

No doubt some bizarre, surreal, esoteric train of thought made me come up with my username when I first joined ;)

I'm feeling distinctly uncreative now. I want to change my username to FlashRipcord! (the exclamation mark is part of the name, of course).

In Star Trek Lore, the Borg seek perfection by assimilation. I drive a Miata MX-5. When driving, I seek perfection. Actually I do in pretty much everything.

Mine is boring El (short for Elizabeth) maynard (last name). Some of you have been quite inventive. Next time I need a sign on I will take a hint from you and work on something interesting.

Mine came about one evening when I was trying to become a member of something or other on-line and I was receiving that annoying message-this username is taken-over and over again. Since I hate attaching a number to a name I've chosen I gamely kept trying until I was ready to throw my monitor at the wall; it finally occured to me to wonder how many people would have atheistic as their username and apparently the answer is none. I have been using it ever since. Of course when I first signed on here i was anxious that it would seem unduly confrontational or aggressive but that fear has faded since reading the many "discussions" on this site!

And yes I am an atheist.

Took mine from the Wire song "In Vivo". Curiously Colin gets it wrong lyrically, it should be "in vitro".

Well, I think it's fairly obvious where mine came from - the world of printing with just a hint of a double meaning.

This topic reminds me of the time I nearly put my foot in it guessing someone's nickname. I had a tall friend named Parker who not long after our first meeting challenged me to guess his nickname. I was just about to say "Nosey", when he cut in with, "Yes, you guessed it - Longshanks!"

> 45

Tongue in cheek? If not, admin will change it for you. They did it for me.

> 48

You are amongst friends! :-)

ha ha thanks Lesmiserables

Of course a name like my own... Les Miserables... is open to all sorts of anagram permutations....

A limbless Seer

Aimless Rebels

Blameless Sire

et cetera

>36 justjim:
yeah, i may have given a 'truthier' account that time. but i strongly assert the stuffedtuna suggestions came after the fact. i have yet to prepare anything resembling stuffed tuna either - although there was some delicious Halibut prepared at a bbq last night...

>32 chase.donaldson: >47 elmaynard:

Chase, El.

I'm with you! Nothing wrong with my own name (or in my case initials and surname). This isn't the sort of forum where I might want to be anonymous!

Robert

I've a few usernames I've invested quite a lot of time in over the years on other sites, but I decided when I joined LibraryThing to stick with my own name.

#54 Not at all commenting on the personality you present here on LT, but due to my fondness of the Discworld novels of Sir Terrence Pratchett, particularly Maskerade, I can no longer see your username or the title of the magnificent Les Miserables without a small part of my (already small) brain shouting "Miserable Les"!

>14 celtic: And I thought Heart of Midlothian is the best 'Scottish' football club. This spoken by a rugby nut.

> 59

Well no! ;-)

The Heart of Midlothian is a great novel by SWS, but Heart of Midlothian FC are an inferior cousin to their neighbours Hibs! (running for my flackjacket)

I thought we weren't hi-jacking any more? Anyway, one more Billy quote*, and growing up in Partick until I was 7 I can really relate to this one...

My dad used to listen to the pools results on the radio so I grew up thinking that Partick Thistle Nil was the name of a football club.

*from memory.

> 61

Well the BigYin is a BigTim too. :-) I have stood in the cold and rain in Firhill many an afternoon watching unspectacular things.

My user name is a combination of my initials combined with my husband's. Quirky. He's a techno-geek as I am a book geek.

>31 Texaco: Especially the pups, Texaco, I've met a few pups this year and they're so darn happy to meet you, all that yipping and wiggling and jumping and licking and falling all over the place and peeing and they don't even know you, amazing!

Mine is a combination of my first initial, given name and surname initial.

>59 Barton:

I like Hearts - They have always been an easy fixture for us!

> 66

Continuing with the hijacking

I like Hearts too, especially when they are getting beat. More so when the Hibees do them at Tynecastle. ;-)

>67 LesMiserables:

Happily - a common occurence!

Belemnites are an extinct race of marine cephalopod. My username is in reference to their fossilised remains, also called belemnites or (in older times) thunderbolts or elfbolts. I noticed the word "belemnite" in a dictionary while looking up something else, and it became my new favourite word. I've been using it as a screen name for about 6 years, and it's hardly ever already taken :)

Actually my user name is my Christian name, quite extrordinary.By the way Barton comes from the old Saxon word for barley barn where it was thrashed. Impressive is it not? In any case my favourite Scottish football club is Nairn County F.C.,HOOAH!!!

My user name is derived from the scatological pseudonym of Henry Spencer Ashbee. I’ve used the polite part.

If we're adding in football teams, Birmingham City, for my sins. Which are evidently considerable.

Well, like many of you, I use an old user-name for a lot of sites, but this one seemed to demand a literary name, so I picked the name of the protagonist from the first of many Walter Scott novels I've read. I quickly shortened it in my sign-off to make it easier for folks to refer to me in replies.

Os.

>14 celtic:
And, with an 's' on the end, a pretty good basketball team as well.

Os.

I started using FionaCat as my username around the time my cat Fiona had to be put down due to a congenital heart defect. She was only 1 1/2 years old and quite a sweetheart. Her brother Harry just turned 7.

I have no opinion whatsoever on Scottish football teams, but if anyone follows US horse racing I am firmly in the Zenyatta camp.

Mine's kind of a reversed Spoonerism. I joined LT on an August Saturday three years ago. I had spent much of the afternoon at the village fete, running the hoop-la stall* in the persona of Merlin, Lord of the Rings**. It rained non-stop and when I staggered home bent double by the weight of Merlin's sodden robe, half-blinded by the descended remains of my cardboard wizard's hat, and wholly choked by swallowed strands of an unstuck moustache (the beard, fortunately, was my own and mostly still in place), my better half, who had spent an enjoyable afternoon never tearing her eyes from two back-to-back Die Hard DVDs, looked up and said "Hello, dear, typical fete weather, then?".

*An old English scam whereby repairs to the village hall roof are funded by innocent punters trying to toss a warped ring over one of many tempting prizes, such as old teddybears (known as Nelsons in the trade as they usually have only half the required number of eyes and legs), home-made table lamps ("It used to be Mum's urn, it seemed a pity to waste it after we scattered her off the pier."), and a cache of sealed tin tubes recently found under the Scout Hut, stamped with an international radiation symbol and labelled "Property of HM Government. DO NOT DROP."

**I know, I know, but the vicar claimed we'd be sued by Peter Jackson if we used any of his film characters' proper names. By the same token, she vetoed the Wine and Beermakers' much-loved "Pin the Belly-button on KIng Kong". The W and Bs took it well. They replaced "King Kong" with "the Vicar".

My name eoinoco = Eoin O'Connor.
Another Celtic supporter here.

Many, many moons ago when I had more aspirations than now, I penned a loathesome space opera and needed the name of a heroine. I believe I lifted the name from The White Goddess or some such. After being rejected by nine publishers (one of whom kept the manuscript through two years and two editors), varielle got thrown in the closet never to see the light of day, until I needed a screen name. I've also found that it is the name of a French string quartet.

With a name ceburaska, I have clearly been waiting for this thread. It's Latvian spelling (excluding diacritical marks) for cheburashka, a sort of soviet winnie the pooh. Was the russian olympic mascot in 2008 I think.
Lived in Latvia in 1996 when created my first email account.
PS Anyone but Celtic. My uncle is a Catholic Motherwell supporter, so I'll go with them rather than the XXX.

Mine is an anagram, and I'm very happy with the combination because (properly spelled with diacritics) it sounds vampire-like and Transylvanian.

Edited to correct possible misunderstanding

>80 ceburaska:

I worked in Latvia a year ago. Riga is a wonderful city with some amazing architecture--for those who are fans of Art Nouveau, it's a must-see.

(Also the most beautiful women, per capita, of any city I've ever visited.)

Stoperat is really Stope Rat.

A stope is a large worked out area in an underground mine; and a rat is, well, a rat.

It's a long story, but it made sense at the time.

Ooshie is what my younger brother used to call me before he could talk properly.

My name doesn't really mean anything, but I find it funny. I have a relatively common name in the US, so I ran out of real-life-related usernames fairly early on in the history of the internet. I've now got 4 or 5 short phrases that I use regularly, all of which were created on the spur of the moment without much thought.

SpoonFed makes me laugh because it's completely removed from how I see myself; I usually think of myself as a fairly curious, questioning person. I vaguely remember the name being inspired by a Petit Filou (yogurt) advert several years ago.

Favourite poem by GM Hopkins:

"Margaret you greving over Goldengrove unleaving?"

Just fulfilling the task of a gravedigger! :)

mr. = used before the name of an office to address a man who holds it.
philistine = a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts.

> 87 Thanks for reanimating this thread. I missed it first time round.

I think my alias is pretty obvious, referring to one of my favourite HP Lovecraft tales and combining two of my favourite things: books and cats.

My username is... my given name. Plus the last two digits of my account's password. Needed a reminder at the time, I guess.

Ah, a renaissance of a classic thread.

Mine is the first letters of my cats and kid at the time (a few new additions since 2018!)

Jings. 15 years have gone under the bridge, more or less, since this one. Still same for me. Username was chosen purely from a memorable read of that time. On another day it could have been Trainspotting, Clarissa, or The Overcoat.

I love pudding.

I play board games.

After Hadewijch the 13th-century mystic and poet.

It’s my surname roughly translated from the Irish.

A deliberate double meaning.

I’m a native of Toronto, Canada, which, between 1793 and 1834, was called York (and some areas of the city are still so known, viz. North York and East York, and we have a York University here), so I am in that sense a Son of York.

And I’m a keen Shakespeare fan, so my username echoes the opening lines of Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York”. As it turned out, my first two FS purchases were Richard III by Paul Murray Kendall (2005) and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (2006).

I recently discovered that some of my distant ancestors emigrated from Yorkshire, so I suppose my username has taken on a triple meaning.

Eh, don’t worry about it.

I need to come up with a user name with a more interesting backstory. Mine is just my last name plus my initials.

I'm a professional astrophysicist with a penchant for medieval manuscripts and Latin.

Chemical Renewal is an anagram of my full name. Shortened for my online user name.

To quote Popeye: "I yam what I yam"

Mine is an acronym for -
World Class Archive Reviewer To Entertain Readers

>103 wcarter: An quite amazingly coincides with your name! Uncanny. 😁

Haven't seen >14 celtic: around these parts for many years. Hope he is well.

I wanted a fantasy-sounding Minecraft username when I was 13, and it already had "Ender" from the Enderman in it from when I first made it, so I just stuck an A in front of it. Then it naturally shortened over time into a nickname, but I couldn't make a three-letter nickname my username anywhere since it would be unavailable, so I added acolyte when I was a student and super into ASOIAF

simply my initials with a #2 since #1 was taken.

Country code followed by my first name. I let the inspiration flow through me as you can imagine… I didn’t want a fully anonymous account as we are not on the dark web here and a sort of familiarity and openness should be warranted in my opinion.

Years ago, my son roped me into playing a video game that required a gamer handle and, being a novice, I didn't have one. So, I used its random name generator to create one and it kept generating horrid names like "KillerMongoose" and "DeathKnife". However, after enough attempts it yielded "HonorWolf", which adequately resonated with me on different levels. Some time later, I needed a handle on a different platform, but "HonorWolf" was already taken, so I switched it to the old German spelling "HonorWulf", in honor of my eldest daughter who lives in Germany. Over the years, the name has stuck and it now reminds me of both my eldest children.

Pendrainllwyn means "Hill of Thorns". My grandfather lived out the last few decades of his life in Pendrainllwyn, a remote old farm house, on the top of a hill in Wales. He was an excellent gardener and maintained a beautiful garden (despite the thorns) well into his 80's. I loved visiting him. On one visit I remember nestling in and reading Moby Dick. It didn't get much better than that. It's one way I have of remembering him.

The Red Guy was the disruptive nemesis of Cow & Chicken, in the extraordinary 90s Cartoon Network animated series created by David Feiss.
Lots on YouTube if you need a fix.

Earlier this century, but nevertheless imprinted on my memory, an uppercase friend of mine with gothic tendencies (who considers himself the leading fount of knowledge in the universe) told me to my face that it's of the Roman type, which must come, if I read the subscript aright, from my Italic ancestors who were old style bookmen; but if he were to go on perpetua-lly to press me by letter on this, it would not offset my anger at his being so bold as to underline the point.

>112 boldface: Oh mercy… I don’t know whether to applaud you or hex you.

No matter what, it’s apparent that your favorite Marvel character is The Pun-isher. ;)

>112 boldface: Classic Boldface! 😁

Serious fan of Neil Young.

I was in a band in my youth (Impulsivo Saltamontes or The Spontaneous Grasshoppers and no, you’ve never heard of us) and one of our ’hits’ was an anti-surfing rant. The lyrics included:
‘No more g-string bikinis,
no more lifestyle sports.
No more eco-awareness,
no more days at the beach…’
Pretty radical stuff for the time.
Anyway, the name now also doubles as a reminder to get off my phone and, I don’t know, read a book or something?

I love the stories here!

>110 Pendrainllwyn: this is one wonderful memory, I instantly have a wonderful picture in my head

These are indeed great stories! Alas for this forum I went with a straight forward option: my name, and 53 - your score after you hit a four to bring up your half century, having been on 49. (I also like the shape of the number 53, especially in certain fonts.)

>119 Jeremy53: Showing the types of movies my children used to watch, when I see the number 53 I think of Herbie the Love Bug.

Hrodberht - An Anglo-Saxon form of the name Robert; a name not unadjacent to my own Christian name. Inspiration from the FS Beowulf on the shelf in front of me.

Mine is not really witty. I have always been a big fan of the Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz and I especially love Woodstock. I created the name for my very first username (AOL?), still it was already taken, so I added my date of birth.

Mine is possibly obvious - my favourite protagonist from "A Confederacy of Dunces" - the 777 has magical overtones.

I picked it when I was 12 and the Internet was fresh-faced and new. No memory of what was going through my mind at the time. I've clung to consistency of identity across platforms ever since.

Favorite character from favorite book. Ulysses himself.

It's the village where I live!