Daily Entertainment.

[muji]

Where does everyone's nickname (online or IRL) come from?

I'll do both 'mu ji' and neenie, because I get questions about both.

Mu Ji: All Emmy's fault. Literally. In the Mandarin curseword cheat sheet the FF muns use, there's a phrase 'dai ro mu ji' with a listed meaning of 'dumb as a wooden chicken'. Reeeeeally early on in Mal-Lilly relations, Mal taught her that phrase, and the wooden chicken part stuck. I found out a year or so later that if you alter the intonation, it can also refer to a very stubborn person. So it works!

Neenie: There are two explanations for this one.

1. 'Stephanie' is an extremely difficult name to pronounce as a young child with a lisp.
2. A friend of mine and I in high school were bored as hell one day in French independent study, so we tried to pronounce our names backwards. Hers was easy, mine was not. She invented 'Neenie' as a consolation prize, and it stuck that way too.

Comments

[timjr.livejournal.com]

timjr is boring. It's my name and my last two initials.

However, heh, 'SquishyMog' (which almost always is parsed down to 'Squish' or 'Squishy'), is something I've had for almost, oh, 10 years now? At least?

It was my second online SN (since the first was on Prodigy and therefore was a series of unchosen letters and numbers, it really is unimportant). I still don't know why I chose 'Squishy', but the Mog part was for, well, Mog the moogle from Final Fantasy VI.

[muji]

Do you get a lot of people reading timjr as Tim Junior?

[herdivineshadow]

SO.

I was, and still kind of am, a big fan of the tv show Lexx. The villain at the beginning was His Divine Shadow.


You can kind of see where I went with that one. :)

[muji]

I've never heard of it -- explain?

[canadabear.livejournal.com]

A 'canada bear' was just the cleverest, fastest way I could come up with another term for 'polar bear' since everything else I was trying at the time was taken. I rather like it, now.

Online, I'm known as Steph, which - and I know you'll all be shocked - is simply Stephanie shortened. I figure Steph is less to type, even though I tend to go by Stephanie in RL for the most part. As for my AIM SN Cywyll, it was all I could get that corresponded to my first Milliways pup Cywyllog. I do have a generic AIM SN GrtWhtBear or somesuch, but I never use it.

[muji]

What, not Steph3? xD

[buongiornodaisy.livejournal.com]

I have way too many nicknames.

"Midge" comes from a character in Vertigo named Midge Wood. Go figure. Vertigo is my favorite Hitchcock film.

"Frankie" is usually a nickname for "Francis." Someone in middle school called me that, once, and it stuck. FYI, a very important FYI, my first name is Frances, not Francis, as Francis would make me a man. And yet people generally have not figured out the difference, so my name is either misspelled or I'm referred to in e-mails as "sir." Yeah, no. And I thought Hurricane Frances would make my life so much easier!

Another important FYI, hinted at in my 'name' for this account: I am not fond of the nickname "Fran." At all.

I'm actually thinking of consolidating my two nicknames into "Fridge." It's quite an apt description of my personality!

[muji]

Just don't like 'Fran'?

[sdelmonte]

The Secret Origin of Simon DelMonte...

When I was in high school, I used to write letters to the editors of comics under my own name. I had a few published in The Fury of Firestorm, and one letter drew a phone call from cousin who was also a fan but who we hadn't heard from in years. A cousin who, at the time, was a dyed in the wool Communist (and who, ironically, has since undergone a complete reversal and ran for Congress as a right-wing hardliner). My mother freaked. She didn't want him calling me to talk comics, and I think she was afraid that other weirdos would come out of the woodwork.

So we compromised. I could keep writing letters to the editors, but under a pseudonym (which at the time was discouraged by the publishers, but tolerated, especially as DC's biggest fan was the pseudonymous T. M. Maple. My DC pen name was Stuart D. Baker from Pontiac, MI (Studebaker from Pontiac - get it?). My Marvel pen name was Simon DelMonte from Forest Hills, NY.

Why this name? I knew a girl named Simone Delmont. I thought her name was cool. (Not many Jewish girls have such utterly French names.) So I took her name and moved one letter, and starting using it. When I decided that it was silly to have a pen name from a place I didn't live, I started using Simon DelMonte all the time.

It stuck. I had about 100 letters published in comics and in the magazine Amazing Heroes. I was known to other fans and to the editors. When the Internet came along, I entered online comics fandom under that name. And even though in many circles I no longer pretend it's my name, I still like to use it. It's still my name on the comic book message boards, where it's the norm to use a fake name anyway. And I still get recognized every so often as a letterhack from the 80s.

And it still confuses the heck out of anyone from outside my fannish life when I use sdelmonte for my blog and my e-mail accounts.

[muji]

V. cool. :D :D

...Yeah, that's about all I got.

(If you ever get a chance to travel, the Jewish population in France is awesome.)

[homicidalfink.livejournal.com]

Homicidal fink is how my second favorite Amber character is described by my third favorite Amber character: a 'homicidal little fink'.

merlinsawall, my primary AIM, is the first name and House of my very favorite character from that canon.

And Kati is, uh, short for Kate. >.>

[muji]

Is it really short for Kate, though? It's the same length!

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

My AIM name, BookBeast4, comes from a t-shirt my mom got me years ago. It has a picture of a furry but friendly-looking monster in spectacles and a tweed suit eating books and under the picture are the words "Book Beast." She got it for me because I'm a rabid reader.

My LJ screen name, miss_yt, is inspired by YT from Snow Crash, one of my pups. But I've been using it since high school for message boards and other places.

[mrmoneypenny.livejournal.com]

Selskianna Laputian fa Seuron.

Yes, I came up with it when I was twelve. Shush. It stuck. And rolls off the tongue nicely.

Selskianna: comes from an odd mammoth-like creature from Garth Nix's The Seventh Tower series, the Selski. I liked the name of it. And added some feminizing features to it.

Laputian: comes from Laputa, my favourite Miyazaki film, also known as Castle in the Sky, or something, in English. I loved it when I was younger. I still do.

fa Seuron: comes from the Tamora Pierce book series The Circle of Magic, where Sandry, aka lady Sandriline fa Toren, explained that the 'fa Toren' indicated class. And, well, I liked how it sounded. Only I added Seuron, because I was crazy.

...

There. :D

[dean-o-dell.livejournal.com]

FYI, Laputa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa) itself derives from Gulliver's Travels.

[aisforamy]

It's really kind of self-explanatory. I chose it before I ever heard of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, too, but it still fits! XD

[kali921.livejournal.com]

I don't use my real name in RPing environs except among people that I know really, really well, so I won't go into that except to say that I have one of those names where people assume that it's automatically okay to use the diminutive form with me, and I constantly have to correct them. Everyone who has my name has to deal with the same thing, I suspect.

My online AIM ID, the one that my real friends know me under, I've had since 1997. It's a reference to a character from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun cycle. My Greengammagirl ID is pretty obvious. ("Gammagammahey" was already taken by someone on AIM, sadly.)

"Kali" came about from other people, not from me. It came unintentionally from my old online handle and then my LJ name. I used to occasionally post pictures of Hindu deity psychedelic poster art, including images of Kali, and that's what my friends started to call me. It was two years or so before I started to use the name myself as my handle.

(Oddly, my online friends in my other fandoms almost always use my real name on AIM, but use "Kali" for me on message boards and such. Weird.)

[notapurpledino.livejournal.com]

I must be one of those few people who don't mind the diminutive form.

...Then again, I always think 'Timothy' sounds grandiose and pompous. Which is why I use it on my reviews :D

[evil_koala_626]

"Toaster" is actually the nickname of my tabletop character who's been around for something like two years now (longest lived tabletop character I've ever had). It was such a goofy moniker that my gaming buddies actually took to referring to me as "Toaster" outside of RP sessions which is fun since prior to this all of my characters fake names had gradually been scrapped and they'd just be referred to as my actual name.

[muji]

Don't lie -- we all know you're a Cylon. :O

[guppy_sandhu]

If I'd ever thought of it, I wouldn't have used my real name online. But by the time I was recruited into crackchat, everyone seemed to know I was a Charlotte already. I blame chains_of_irony.

I was briefly a Fluffy in RL, but only because it was a more complimentary description of my hair than Messy. Only two people called me that in person, who were the ones who knew bigfluffball as my main identity when we met. I discarded the nickname when I fell out badly with them, and despite now being on good terms with one, have never really wanted it back.

Some of my friends here now call me Wedic, which happened one dinnertime when they combined 'weird' and 'medic' to describe me and my degree. I never thought it would stick, but it did, and I like it.

I have yet to have anything published or put online under my pen name, but I have one short story for a magazine in the works, and once it's been beta read it'll be sent in with the pen name Cerys Wedic. Partially to disguise the fact that a few of the characters are based on real people.

In chat I have been referred to as Charlotte, Char, Chars, Charss, Charsss and, on one occasion Wedicasnake. Explanation for the last four is that one of the first people who started calling me Char revealed that they were pronouncing it 'Ka' as in the snake, resulting in various acquisitions of ses.

[agonistes]

My sophomore year when I lived with missemerald and tworedmaryjanes, we decided we needed new names.

Prancibald struck missemerald's fancy. (From Strong Bad Email 'flashback'.) And because we were (and are) fans of Twin Peaks, and because tworedmaryjanes really does look frighteningly similar to missemerald, tworedmaryjanes became The Doppelganger.

And somehow -- I don't remember exactly how -- I picked up the name Fang the Intrepid. I came up with the Intrepid part -- it seems like a good thing to be -- but I think missemerald was responsible for Fang.

And now this laptop's name is Fangsdottir. Which is kind of badass.

[muji]

...Those are the craziest names. xD

[misslucyjane]

My mom likes nicknames. I have been (and still often am) Miss Mary Sue, Miss Mary Jane, Miss Lucy Lu, Miss Sally Ann, etc, etc...

I change names a lot--I get bored easily. My first LJ moniker was einini, which is from an Irish lullaby and which no one could spell. I changed it to minor_blue after a few years, which is the name of a song I really like. Then when I got bored with that I decided to go with something actually name-ish, and at some point while I was thinking about it Mom called me Miss Lucy Jane, and la.

My AIM name and my email address are still minorblue, and I doubt I'll be changing that anytime soon. My Y!M name has been the same for the better part of a decade--sometimes things just stick.

(The pen name is what I like to be called plus my grandma's maiden name. I kind of wish I'd gone with something more original but too late now.)

[muji]

HI NEED TO EMAIL YOU COMPLETELY SLOW LA. *facepalms*

[camwyn]

Camwyn was the name of a minor background character in the Deed of Paksenarrion books by Elizabeth Moon. More specifically, Camwyn was an ancient saint- mentioned as being a saint even in the Gird novels, which were set hundreds if not more years before the main books- associated with dragons; he's depicted in stained-glass windows as riding a fire-breathing dragon. We don't really know more than that about him except that there's a paladin of Gird in the Paksenarrion books who gets called Cami or Camwynya as a joke because her fellows think she ought to be a paladin of Camwyn instead. The first BBS that I dialed up that asked you to create a login handle rather than just using your name was a place called the Dragon's Lair. After some thought I went with the name Camwyn there. It was the easiest name to transfer across various BBSes without sounding like a dork.

People have taken to calling me Cam in RL as a shortening of Camwyn. I'm good with that. My other RL nickname is just a shortening of my real name. No biggy.

[muji]

Man, am I so glad I asked this question -- never would've known, elsewise. :D

[lai-lore.livejournal.com]

Um. Lai is short for Lorelai. I was playing around with making a new journal and wanted something with Lai in it and finally took 'Lorelai', put the Lai part in front and then the rest behind it. Lai_lore.

My AIM sn, booksofferlife, is as it is because booksarelove was taken. I wanted something that showed my book love.

And, um. I think that's pretty much it. It's not that interesting, sadly.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

It's a portmanteau of my first and middle names. That is all.

[muji]

Simple yet classic.

[newredshoes]

Back in the day I used to be BrieflyDel, which was a Sandman reference -- I have a friend who from the moment we met insisted I was Delirium, with which I agreed (especially as he was Dream, even though at the time he was operating under the delusion that he was Destruction), and my favorite arc in the series is Brief Lives, so. All my old fanfic is posted around the web under BrieflyDel.

My first username was brandybuck, and when I moved on from LotR fandom, I wanted something that wouldn't tie me down. I am a maniac for shoes, and red is my favorite color, so... ta-daa!

I've sometimes thought it would be cool to have set myself up with an online alias, but I am just not that canny and wind up introducing myself by my real name on instinct. Sometimes I wonder if this will get me in trouble when I am trying to be a Real Published Author, but I'm going to guess we've got some time before that happens, so. :)

[lienne.livejournal.com]

*grins* I happen to think your LJ name is pretty damn awesome, for the record.

[bcgphoenix]

The first time I went into crackchat, years and years ago, avariel_wings introduced me to everyone as "Phoenix" (taken from this username, which I've had since 2001). Since there were something like four or five other Beths at the time, it stuck much more readily than my real name, and now I do things like giggle uncontrollably whenever that Phoenix *points to icon* is on screen during American Gladiators.

It also tends to get shortened to "Pho" or "Phoe" for ease of typing stuff.

[adiva_calandia]

And I never know whether to pronounce it "Foe" or "Fee" when it's shortened. Dilemma!

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

Ven is short for Ravenna, which was a nickname given to me in my senior year of high school by my minions -- a bunch of lower-grade fringe kids who I nicknamed and started a writing group with. I used to hold "classes" after school for them in writing Tengwar and Runic and REAL literature...

I was an Oscar Wilde fangirl of the highest order. Someone latched onto Ravenna being the name of the poem that won him a prize in school, and started calling me that. It stuck like HARD. That's the name on all my college work and grades, and on my mail... pretty much the only thing with my real name on it anymore is my learner's permit and desk job E-Mail because I have this freaky spazzy wackjob coworker who OBJECTS STRONGLY!!1!1one to ANYBODY EVER OMFG being called anything other than their real birth-certificate names in a BUSINESS ENVROINMINT!!1!!QREWTU984QP98*EXPLODES*

:|

.....and for those who know me on AIM, the reason I'm "Ven badger" is because I follow (among other things) Native American spiritual beliefs, and the badger is my totem -- a symbol of the path I walk in my core being. He is the keeper of stories, guardian of the South, and his wisdom is aggression, especially in natural healing and in defence of spiritual rights.Badger is an "antidote to victimization." Those who follow Badger's path are known to be determinedly self-reliant.

Aaaaand my journal name? A Gethenian is a person from the world called Gethen, or Winter, from the book The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. They are androgynes who live on a world where it is always cold. I named my journal after them because I have an average of no sexual identity whatsoever and I HATE. HOT. WEATHER. HATE IT. I would live in ANTARCTICA and be VERY VERY VERY HAPPY. I consider my house uncomfortably warm if the thermostat goes above 65 degrees, and outside, I pout if it's over 55.

[mogget_cat]

Saph is short for Saphyria, which as well as being my LJ (saphyria), is the name of a character from one of my gigantic collaboration fics with my friend Alana. Alana's character was Aqurthia, whose name Saphyria would often irritatingly shorten to "Ack." In retaliation, Aqurthia shortened Saphyria's name to Saph. It's been the key name for my facades on the internet since I was thirteen. Saphyria, SaphtheImmortal, and others.

Traci was the internet name I chose when Alana chose to be called Alana. "Traci Duncan" and "Alana Lee." Yay slumber-parties for young fic-writers! :D

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

I have never had a proper nickname all to myself. The shortened version of my first name sounds exactly the same as the shortened version of my older sister's name. Oh I've had random names through out the years, but never something that people would randomly call me to get my attention in a crowded room.

Then came the summer between my Sophomore and Junior years of college. That summer I rented a room in a Frat House, but since I didn't have a whole lot of love for the frat or the other girls who lived there at the time, I spent a lot of my leisure hours outside in this soccer field across the way. One night while hanging out with a guy I knew I found myself waxing poetical about the nature of Cancer. How it was the result of molecular typing monkeys attempting to randomly construct "Hamlet" and making a typo. And that in its own way Entropy was a beautiful thing. I dubbed myself the Mistress of Entropy shortly after that.
ms_ntropy was my OH SO CLEVAR way of separating my lj from my hotmail/yahoo accounts.

Princess Bing is stolen directly from "The Sopranos". I was in NYC with Rocker and Momma Bing a few years ago. Momma was getting dressed up for our night on the town and Rocker thought she looked an awful lot like Carmela Soprano. Seriously, gold metallic belt, it was horrifying. Rocker then pointed to me and said: "That makes you Meadow." (which isn't true, if anyone I'm AJ...but I digress.)

There's an episode where the whole Soprano family is under FBI surveillance and are given code names. Tony = Bada Bing, Carmella = Mrs Bing, Meadow = Princess Bing, and AJ = Baby Bing.

I've been using Bing online pretty much ever since.
Side note: I've also been compared to Chandler Bing. Apparently we're both Transponsters.

Agoodshinkickin is my new name du jour. Why?
Because there isn't a person on this Earth, myself included, who couldn't benefit from a good shin kickin' every now and again.

the trials and tribulations of a girl with a boy name.

[prix-etoile.livejournal.com]

For the longest time, I went by "Kay" on the internet. 'Cause no one ever believes I'm a girl.

That's where the "kayzie" came in my previous username of "wild_n_kayzie"...you know, instead of "wild and crazy".

"Kyle" just gets me hell. People want to pronounce it "Kylie" and I not-so-kindly tell them "if my name was Kylie, there would be a 'i' in it." bah. :P

In my math class in my senior year of high school, I was known as Kylette, because there were two Kyles in my class. Me, also known as Girl!Kyle and Kyle Reesor, aka: Boy!Kyle. the Girl! and Boy! got too annoying for our teacher to refer to us as...so we were renamed as Kylette and Kyler. We also did all group quizzes together and signed our names as Kyle squared. huuur!

I have tons of nicknames in my family...most of them being generic like 'sweetheart', or 'sweetie pie'. Kylie Marie...etc.

My friend Linh has the idea of adding "face" to the end of everyone's name, making me Kyleface. I often refer to myself, in a weepy voice and fists for hands, as "Llamaface" and act like Emperor Kuzco.

[aberration]

Let's just say I had an anime phase and... never really got around to changing this username, or cared enough to. Sometimes people will also shorten it to "Sho", which is fine with me.

People usually want to have a nickname for "Veronica", but I don't tend to like them. Vern stuck for a while in freshman year, and then Von, because it' rhymed with my roommate's name and so made it easy to call for both of us. The only thing I won't allow is Ronnie.

And some of the friends I grew up with call me 'Mafia' or 'Maf', stemming from my Really Obvious Italian Heritage.

[ostro_goth]

My nick that I go by is Maru, which is a Japanese version of the beginning of my RL name, which is Martina. It was shortened to 'Maru-chan' in Japan in 1990, and the granny called me 'Maruko-san', which I found amusing. The 'maru' part can be written with a really simple kanji, 丸 -- I hope your computers can do that! I kept signing myself that, and as I had a colleague at my slavery who knew Japanese as well, and they started calling me 'Maru' without any ending, neither -chan nor -ko nor anything else.

My mun journal is yakalskovich, which is basically very fake Russian. It's from an odd document I hunted up over Google in connection with Prince Felix Yusupov. Things get randomly bizarre once Felix is mentioned, so I'd rather not elaborate. I'd be here till tomorrow's DE goes up...