It is a variant of my Gamertag. I like keeping things simple. I came up with it as a result of trolling someone who was spouting off a bunch of random paranoid conspiracy theories. So i acted as if I were some kind of highly advanced evil government ai. I kind of like the way it looked, so I stuck with it.

Once upon a time, a young lad needed a username. Said young lad was unable or unwilling ( I truly can't remember) to simply use his favorite animal as he had in the past, and so he looked for something new. He had a certain fondness for badgers and a love of Star Wars, and so he combined the two, and the name stuck.

At least, I think that's how it happened.

If anyone is still feeling the translation bug, I wish you luck with this one. If you'd prefer something easier, I have gone by a few other names, most notably WordWolf, Talven, and Talath. I seem to recall Talven being some form of the Finnish word for winter, and I think Talath is the Sindarin word for plain or tundra, so... Wolf of the Wintery Plain, maybe? It's about the only way I can think of to get something translatable out of all that.

My name comes from my MLP OC. (of the same name DUH) The basic premise was a hero pony whose talent was dark magic and all the trials and tribulations that would logically follow as Midnight would try to resist any temptation to go down the villainous path like Lord Sombra. Being unfairly persecuted by those who (Rightfully) fear dark magic would also be a thing that Midnight would have to deal with.

Mine came from a screen name I made up for an author avatar of mine (a very minor character) in a semi-fic blip I never quite got around to.

And as for how I came up with it in the first place? I thought it sounded cool.

July, the month I was born in. Flame, because fire is a very questionable and yet beloved friend of mine.

Since I started using this as a username it's been cut down in all sorts of ways.

When I was still pretty young it was condensed down to 'JF'. From when I was about 11 until 16 or so, roughly.

'July' eventually became the predominant version after I got a bit older, and people eventually stopped using JF entirely for the most part.

More recently others have started calling me 'Ju' as a shorter version.

In all those years I think I've only been called Flame like, once.

-July

Bonus Challenge: Go on, hS, try and Elvish it.

I didn't even know this many people existed!
How do we all fit?!

I created my screen name back in 2006 or so. I had just created a writing blog aimed at posting humorous non-fiction articles in the vein of Dave Barry. I decided to make homage to Poor Richard's Almanack by Ben Franklin and called myself Poor Cynic. The blog withered away to nothing, but the name stuck around.

I go by the name of supersonic805 on the LEGO forums. In roman numerals, DCCCV is 805. I chose that because while I still enjoy Sonic the Hedgehog, I no longer wish to be known by a name randomly generated as a suggestion. Besides, DCCCV is longer than three numbers.

Sort of like KittyEden does, only mine was worse. She was a Black Butler (an anime/manga series) Sue, a Fury, which was a species I made up that was like a demon (canon species) but more powerful, with wings made of unbreakable, flexible adamant (a material whose properties I invented as the need arose). Her lust-object was Sebastian (a demon, one of the main canons; the one everyone lusted after) but nobly set her attraction aside to help him and Grell (another canon) get together... Did I mention she was an RP character? She was fond of the phrase, "Your attack misses because I have/can..." Did I mention the people playing Sebastian and Grell had no interest in getting together? She had to dodge a lot of attacks.

Fortunately, I realized how terrible she was after one RP. I then elected to write under her name (Erin Alekto) as a constant reminder to never do that again. (I never wrote much though; I preferred reviewing.) But when I arrived at the PPC, an organization devoted to reminding people not to write like that, I didn't feel like using that name was necessary. But her name was the only username I used at the time. I experimented with combinations of letters, but couldn't find one I liked. It was getting late. All the names I came up with were starting to look the same: like pure gibberish. Out of frustration I paid a visit to the TV Tropes page for names that sound like they were invented by mashing the keys and my eyes lit upon the title: Cat-on-the-Keyboard Names. The rest is history.

I've come to like it a lot. It lends itself really well to cool-sounding nicknames: the snappy, gender-neutral "Key," the cute, punnable, femme-but-in-a-comfortable-way "Cat," and potential for more. Also, I only use it with the PPC, which means i have nothing but positive associations with it.

I have lurked The Board for a while, and my username reflects that.

When I chose it, I thought numbers-as-letters was cool.

My old (oooold) handle was SoulFinder, until I got tired of it and decided I wanted something better. I figure that without all the distracting physical details you basically get people's inner selves online, and I've always tried to be my authentic self besides, so I though just "soul" was appropriate. I went looking around for a cool word with that meaning, and I found this one in a Yiddish-English dictionary in my high school library. I cribbed it, and it stuck.

That's pretty much it.

~Neshomeh

I made it up a looong time ago, when I was still in High School and first got into Middle-Eart's lore...

What does it mean? Well, I'll let someone more versed than me in those languages, answer that for me!

A lesser god in Greek Mythology, Phobos (fear) and his twin brother Deimos (terror) accompanied their father Ares into battle. I picked up the name from the book "Gates of Fire", which is about the battle of Thermopylae. Phobos is the shield piercer. He breaks defenses better than any spear.

So, why did I pick that name for myself? Because, when I play games (Magic: The Gathering is the big one at the moment), I try to break my opponents defenses in that way. Make them afraid of what my next move might be. Make them afraid of what I might have in my hand or up my sleeve. I play a very mental game and my opponents make mistakes because of it.

If someone were to do a Quenya translation, it probably comes out as something like "Shadow on the Heart/Mind".

-Phobos, the Mind Killer

It’s as close to "Anonymous" and as far from "non-descript entity" as I could get, because I won’t tell you who I am, but still want to be recognizable.

HG is an aged, German, genderbent Hermione Granger who actually sports a gray beard.

Now, a little more interestingly - another username I use: EQSkyfall. EQ is sort of an abbreviation for equestrian (fancy word for 'I Ride Horses') and Skyfall is a character's name of mine :)

Let's just say that I took my first name and turn it into the English equivalent of it and use a variation of a somewhat translation of my surname.

I just took my first name and played with the letters.

El = either poetic word for star, or (by association with Elda) an Elf
Cal = shine,brightness,light
-ion = son/heir/follower

Taken together, means something like "Bright Elf son" or "Son of the bright star". I prefer the "star" interpretation.

As far as grammar, it's modelled on Eldarion/Ereinion, although not sure if I've gotten the adjective order correct (I guess Calelion would potentially be a viable alternative, but sounds a bit too Kryptonian. Besides, one of the rules of Elvish in-universe is "change the language to make it sound pretty" so I feel justified in going for the more euphonious option).

Huine is 'shadow, twilight', soron is 'eagle'. Hence, Eagleshade. It's not entirely proper Quenya, but it works for me. (And it's pronounced Hween-AY-sore-on, since that always comes up.)

As for why... it was my first email handle, and I got an email address to talk about the release of The Two Towers with a friend over the Christmas holidays. So I pulled out the Silmarillion and looked through the language index... and that's all there is to it.

hS

^^^^^ As for that thing: it's a Latinisation of my Tengwar monogram:



That's a small hyarmen contained in a large silme, so I used small h, large S. Et voila.

hS, owner of the sexiest name, muaha

... by a rock band, who were very popular in my country, Denmark, and virtually unknown everywhere else.

I don't recall exactly why I started using it; it's a very catchy little song, but nothing extraordinary. But it does have the advantage that no-one else uses it, so whenever I sign up for something it's always available as a username.

I've actually stopped thinking of it as a song and just think of it as my second name.

Techno-Dann has been with me for a very long time - it was my first online handle, and the PPC was one of the first places I used it... thirteen years ago? Gosh, I feel old.

It was... hmm. Superhero name as invented by an idealess (and very pre-social-justice) fifteen year old? "Dann" borrows from the Redwall series, as I'm sure people who've read Marlfox have figured. (First fandom cred!)

More recently, Delta Juliette started life as a name I used to start to get away from the very gendered reading I had of Techno-Dann. It's very much a zero-imagination name: my IRL initials are DJ, and I'm leaning towards a direct transliteration of my name when it changes - Daniel James will become Danielle Juliette. It's also quietly transfeminine - "Delta" being used in math and physics to denote change, and "Juliette" being a very femme name.

Anyway, my handle comes from this Yu-Gi-Oh! card. I liked (and still like) the name even though basically everything about the card is crappy.

I enjoy coming up with characters just for the sake of drawing them. Not even writing about them, just coming up with them and leaving them sitting around. Nova was one of my favorites.

I've made an article for it on the wiki, finally.

I picked the name because a) I couldn't think of anything better, and b) The Door Within has always been one of my favorite series. Even if the doctrine is a bit sketchy. It got me through one of those IRL difficulty spikes. Y'know, when you've just done the real life equivalent of leveling up and the new game mechanics are hard to master and the enemies just got a lot tougher.

Interestingly enough, Alleb is not my full screen name. Technically, it's Alleb Knight. But that just sounds pretentious.

Also, I remember being rather impressed by your name when you first arrived--it's a good one, very memorable.

-Alleb KnightAlleb

um,
Kitty was originally the name of my terrible OC. and then I took it as my own.
That's about it.

I should probably copy my answer for repeats of this thread, but meh, I like telling the story.

So! I'm a big RPG nerd, be it tabletop or MMORPGs, and the very first MMORPG I ever played was Runescape. This was back in the day when you actually got to choose your username instead of being forced to pick one provided by the game, and I decided there was no way I wanted to be CamelotOrc3327 or whatever the number was (The CamelotOrc bit really stuck in my mind; I don't think I'll ever forget that.), no way, no how. I wanted a name name, dangit!

The only problem was that anything resembling a real name would be caught by the censors and not be allowed, so I played around with some sounds and letters before coming up with Iximaz.

Look, I was twelve, it sounded like a cool name at the time. Stop laughing. :P

Iximaz ended up becoming my online name for just about everything else, and though I ended up abandoning Runescape in favor of World of Warcraft, I kept the name Iximaz as my account name there. Not to mention I named my hunter character that as well, in memory of the first Iximaz, who would spend hours shooting at hill giants from behind the safety of a stalagmite wall they couldn't seem to cross.

Good times, good times...