this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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This has probably been asked before but I wanted to add another layer/an alternative.

So, I ask, where did your username/pseudonym/nickname originate from? What's the meaning behind it?

Or alternatively, which is the most creative/interesting nickname origin you have come across?

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[–] Birch@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago

Birch, please.

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Resol - can mean a number of different things. It's the first 5 letters of the word "resolution". It's also the word "loser" spelled backwards. It's two notes on a keyboard (D and G in Anglo-Saxon music notation). And it just looks and sounds cool in my opinion.

van - the Dutch word meaning "of" or "from". Note that I am not referring to actual vans (the German equivalent being "von", which also appears in a lot of names). Also I prefer spelling that word completely in lowercase.

Lemmy - isn't it obvious? It's this wonderful website.

Put them together, and you get "Resol van Lemmy". It sounds pretty nice, don't you think? Especially since I really hate my real name.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

At first I lurked on my boyfriend's account. We had both left Reddit during the API debacle, but I wasn't ready to rejoin social media yet, so he hopped on Lemmy first.

But as he shared links and news and memes with me, and I scrolled the comments, I started wanting to participate. The first few times I felt drawn to comment (but didn't yet), I wanted to ask people what the reasoning was behind their thoughts. That stuff is interesting to me.

So when I finally sat down and made an account for myself, it was the first thought in my head. I haven't found myself asking anybody about their reasoning since then, but I still like the name.

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My poochie was clinically depressed

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 days ago

I had a job doing QA where I had to create user accounts. Some Guy was one of the three that I created every day.

[–] white_nrdy@programming.dev 5 points 5 days ago

I really liked Weird Al when I was like 12. Still do.

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

CB radio user names are called handles. One of my nicknames is The Vandal. I think Subterranean Homesick Blues is one of Dylan's best. Violà.

[–] nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago

I opened a physical dictionary to a random page and pointed to a word without looking.

First attempt was diarrhea

[–] VirtigoMommy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago

I get dizzy during sex

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)
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[–] DepressedMan@reddthat.com 7 points 6 days ago

Ehhh it is what it is.

[–] Thcdenton@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago
[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This is a question I was asked all my life, so already in 2004 I wrote a blog post about it: https://paradies.jeena.net/weblog/2004/oct/jeena-paradies but it's in German so I'm posting the translation here:

It was sometime in the year 2000 when I had already been DJing at small parties for a while, playing house, drum’n’bass, big beats, and electro. When people asked who the DJ was, everyone just said, "That’s Richard." Naturally, that didn’t sound very cool for an alternative DJ. Then my cousin, who was also a DJ but played the more mainstream style of techno, chose the name DJ Alec-tron, which put some pressure on me. Since we often DJed together, and I didn’t want to go down in history as "DJ Richard," I needed a proper DJ name.

So I started looking for a suitable artist name for myself as a disc jockey. One day, we took the train to the Love Parade in Berlin. We stocked up on canned beer the day before and opened the first can as early as 3:00 AM (in the middle of the night). The fun and drinking continued merrily. I occasionally glanced out the window, hoping to find inspiration from some distant land (aka eastern Germany).

And then it appeared—like the Holy Grail once revealed itself to King Arthur and his knights—from out of nowhere: the station sign "Jena Paradies." I instantly knew that this would be my new artist name. It was as if the hand of God had guided me along the tracks to Jena Paradies station and bestowed this name upon me.

Jena Paradies train station

A month after the Love Parade, I had my first gig as DJ Jena Paradies. There’s even photographic evidence from that time:

People at a party, a DJ spinning vinyl records

But over time, I didn’t want to be named after a station in eastern Germany anymore, so I started thinking of a new, better version of the name. I realized that if I added an "e," the name would be pronounced like Gina Wild’s first name. That sounded much cooler to me, so it became my stage name to this day.

Pronunciation: First name pronounced like Gina Wild’s first name roughly "Djeena" and last name pronounced like the German word "Paradies" paradise

I now use it almost everywhere related to me as an "artist"—very often online, with my band, and for photography, which I want to do more of in the future.

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[–] Gaspar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The Old Man waiting for you at the end of time in Chrono Trigger is Gaspar, the Guru of Time. (At least in the US - in Japan he was called Hash)

I thought it was fitting since I ever so briefly ran my own instance (endofti.me) when I first jumped ship from Reddit.

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I was eating something when I made the account. Make a wild guess what it might have been.

[–] WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago
[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago

It sounds cute.

I was promoted from the rank of Commander.

[–] dumbass@leminal.space 5 points 6 days ago

I dunno, but people sure love calling me it all the time.

[–] hollerpixie@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago

My husband’s nickname for me. I was born in the holler in Appalachia and am a woodsy pixie. It stuck and is now my trail name.

[–] antiquity2038@reddthat.com 2 points 5 days ago

Bitwarden username generator 👍

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Way more years ago than I would like to admit, when I was in my teens, I learned to play a Fender Mexican Stratocaster. It became my name on my BBS, and has stuck ever since.

Most people think it has to do with FM radio.

Edit: Also, this question has managed to get replies from almost all of the prolific participators on Lemmy. Nice.

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[–] TheBraveSirRobbin@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Username should be pretty self explanatory. If you still don't get it you can either ask me or bravely run away.

[–] legopika@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago

I liked Legos and I liked Pikachu at the time(I was 11 or so? Trying to make a Minecraft account lol)

I don't think I'll be able to use this name for anything commercial if I wanted to do that...

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago

Stole it from a user on a pirate bbs I was a member of in the early 90s, Digital Underground

[–] Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago
[–] Lennnny@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

My name is Helen. I hated that there were no good nicknames for it (ugh, Helly...) but I love my name. Mentioned this to a friend who was like "you could use other parts of the name for a nickname..." and suggested Lenny. As a woman on the internet, having a gender ambiguous username is very beneficial, so I adopted it, and I absolutely love it. I added extra ns because then it'd look like bad kerning Lemmy.

[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)
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My girlfriend calls me that regularly.

I am kind of introverted, am I actually introvert or socially awkward or whatever doesn't matter, but for the simplicity I'm introvert and I like cats.

[–] spittingimage@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

As a bookish child, I made weekly trips to the library. To get to the kids section I had to pass the large print shelf, and there was one book that was always there: The Spitting Image. The gargoyle on the cover scared me! But when I finally looked him straight in the eye I found that he was trying to look furious, but came across as a little goofy. That's the way I imagine myself, too.

[–] TheBeege@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

My initials are BJB.

I was in jazz band in high school. We were doing a joint thing with the choir, so everyone was running around moving stuff to make space. My parents had bought me a nice music bag with my initials on a plate on the front of it. Someone held up my music bag asking who owned it. I figured they just wanted to let the owner know where it was being moved to, so I spoke up... "Hah, your initials are BJ!"

Hence, my name became blowjob. The completionists called me Blowjob Betty (I'm male) to get that last initial in, too. At the time, I was quite quiet and took myself maybe a little too seriously. This ended that.

One day, I was at my buddy's place, and he called me "Beege," saying he didn't want to say "Bee and Jay," as it was too long. At that point, I said fuck it. My name is Beege. Let's go.

Over time, my friends added an article because why the fuck not.

Over 20 years later, and it's still my name. It actually taught me to not take myself so seriously. Although, one interviewer at a job had a really hard time keeping it together when HR told her my nickname without catching the meaning. She and I are good friends now.

In any case, I always get a slight chuckle inside when people hesitate slightly after introducing myself. I'm great at keeping a deadpan face about it now, too

[–] kubok@fedia.io 6 points 6 days ago

My username is called after my first home brewed beer. It's a portmanteau of a slur used for people of my city and the type of beer I brewed that day.

[–] sleepmode@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I zonk out really fast. Sometimes mid-sentence.

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[–] Canopyflyer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Former skydiver.

Performed a lot of Demonstration jumps into everything from airports, race tracks, professional sports stadiums, high school sports stadiums, golf courses, and a few other places that required skill and knowledge to land in safely.

Also, spent a lot of time teaching canopy skills to up and coming jumpers.

[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago
[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 days ago

My nickname was originally "Stoy On" but over time it got shortend to "Stoy".

"Stoy On" comes from a small Swedish comedy film by "Galenskaparna och After Shave", a fantastic group of theatre actors who has had a very long and successfull carreer of comedy theatre, television and film. They specialized in musicals, with plenty of amazing wordplay and some fantastic songs.

Anyway, the film I am talking about this time is the TV film "The Castle Tour", the summary of it is that a group of Swedish tourists are going on a tour of a castle in Sweden, the guide has them confused with an English tour, and the joke is that the guide just speaks a nonsense language.

Now, one of the nonsense pharses the guide used was "Stoy on!", which is meant to mean "Se upp!" in Swedish, and that experssion has two meanings in Sweden, the normal one "Look out!", and the litteral one "Look up!"

At the same time I was getting annoyed at not having a standard nickname online and when gaming.

And since I thought it was fun to have a nickname that meant "Look out!" in some ways, and I liked the sound of it, I adopted "Stoy On" as my standard nickname, and since it got shortend I mainly go by "Stoy" online, or, if it is taken, "Stoy On".

[–] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 3 points 6 days ago

Tenno, wake up. It's time to put on the silly norg fish mask from cetus and make it look good.

[–] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)
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