h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'A rose is a rose and would smell as sweet no matter what you call it'

I wonder. Would you be bothered with something called a 'sero'?
Or a 'sore'? Would you stick your nose in something called an 'orse'?
And an 'eros' of course is something else altogether...

There are several 'nicknames' here at h2g2 that belie the wit and intelligence of the authours. Self deprecation perhaps?
Many are simply incomprehensible, foreign words to my eye.
A few of the really attractive ones turn out to be covering a multitude of sins.
And a couple, these are the ones that bother me, are so off-putting I can't bring myself to visit their homepages and yet every posting from them seems to reflect the most brilliant and sensitive souls...

Maybe it's just me.
I am, as you can readily see, no more, no less than who I say I am - [email protected]

With so many newcomers recently it seemed a good topic for a frank and fearsome flaming session. Anyway, I've opened the subject for general discussion.
Feel free:
to explain what your nickname means to you
or how you think others might see it;
or to express your reactions to others,
or even ask them what they mean.
Maybe some of the 'newbies' will ask for advice...
Who knows. This could be the worst idea I've ever had.

Well the reason I chose the name Dax is very simple. I love Star Trek, in Star Trek Deep Space Nine there is a character called Jadzia Dax, she is my all time favorite...

So my name is basically just a tribute to my favorite Star Trek character

My name isn't Clive. But I didn't chose it for anonimity. Clive was just a cartoon charcter I used to draw when I was younger.
When I discovered there was this thing called the internet I adopted him as my name then too. You can see what Clive looks like if you visit my moonfruit site, the link to which is on my personal space.

Clive

I chose Mina because she's a character in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Someone else wrote a follow up called "Mina" and in it she takes a lover. The way that her lover makes love to her, reminded me of the way my boyfriend of the time made love to me, so when I went online I used Mina.
The Muse bit came from a friend on h2g2 who told me that Dragonfly was asking for Muses and my friend suggested that I become Muse of Bondage, due to some conversations we'd been having on ICQ. It seems to have stuck now, as people always use my full title when they refer to me, I'm never just Mina.

Hi Mina!
I've been visiting the Natural History Museum for many years since childhood, and then about 7 years ago I met the man whose job it was to put some of the exhibits in their tanks. I bought a postcard of the coelacanth about 5 years ago and put it near my computer, mostly as a remninder of the man...
I joined up to h2g2 about 6 months before turning 40, and at a point in my life where I wanted to make a new start after many 'dormant' years.
When I was looking for an h2g2 name, what better to choose than a fish (so long and thanks for all the...). A very old one that had been thought to be lost for good, but suddenly appeared, and got people excited all over again. Given the right conditions it gleams and shines.
There's one in Dirk Gently too, which I read about 12 years ago.
So, it just seemed the right name for me, and I've grown to love it.

Once, someone suggested that I might have chosen the name of an ancient, ugly, old fish because I was suffering from low self esteem! Far from it. It's my little joke. You'll know if you've met me. Life begins at 40.

The major inspiration for my name is explained on my page, that is I'm named for my favourite character in a fondly remembered BBC TV children's show from many years ago. It also has connections to RL, using some of my initials and with a vague reference to flying (one of my leisure activities). The few people who've assumed I must be heavily into heavy metal music have been corrected.

{blatant plug: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A442333
- "The Meanings of Usernames"}

Myself, I reckon the major inspiration for all these names is to be not *another* Fred... real names don't have the namespace to cope with globalisation...

I just wanted something catchy that would stand out. I do like kebabs, though. Mmmm, kebabs.

The Apathetic.

Because normally I am (apathetic, that is). Every now and then (the entirety of last week for example) I can be a wonderfully helpful and sympathetic person. For the rest of the year I'm all but entirely ambivalent.

As an example, I recently took up smoking again. When a concerned friend made a heart-felt plea for me to stop on pain of a miserable and cancer-ridden death, I took the cigarette out of my mouth and with a look of disgust stubbed it out firmly. Then I lit up another one and told him that "I wasn't intending to live forever anyway."

Three weeks later and he's still peeved at me. Oh well...

at first mine was just Minesweep Goddess. i chose this because i played a lot of minesweeper while waiting for pages to load, and got pretty good. the i added the Keeper title. bad puns probably because i had been reading the Callahan seiries(by Spider Robinson) which has a lo of puns and made me appreciate them. the Mad Forum Artist-- that came from being the resident forum artist at the Palace Flophouse and Grill. mad because that sounds cooler. i got my name anylized once, when i was just Minesweep Goddess, but now can't find the thread, so i'm going to try it again. if i get another(anylization) i'll post it here.

My favourite guitar ever is the pink paisley Fender Telecaster. It was also available in a rather fetching blue flower. Both finishes were available on the Stratocaster and Precision basses. They were first made in the days of flower power when a bright spark at Fender came up with the idea of sticking a bit of walpaper to the front of what would otherwise have been a normal finish. They then laquered it with a fetching "pinkburst". The finish was re-issued in the 90's.

I bought one a couple of years ago but rarely play it for fear of giving it an accidental ding.

P(anorak)P

Loonafish was originally because I liked the Lunachicks (punk/metal group). I use it for my email and all net stuff so it's kinda really like my alter ego now. I like the way a lot of people on h2g2 have long, imaginative nicknames.

Now you see it's all starting to make sense. If Mister PP hadn't explained about the guitar I'da gone on thinking all the wrong things. He did however obfuscate a bit with that signature ..what the hey is an 'anorak'? An eskimo drummer?

Lucinda, please be sure to re-post the link to your fine article every time the page turns here, wouldja huh, please.

For now I'll reserve comment on the rest except to say 'thank you'. Strangely, every one of you cleared up questions that had been really bugging me about you. You know who you are!

So where's all the newbies?
And when are we gonna start picking on each other's names?

if anyone cares:
clelba is just the first two letters of each of my names stuck together to make one
(eg JOhn WIlliam SMith would be Jowism)
clelba's the best i've come across so far though.
^. .^
= ' =

"And when are we gonna start picking on each other's names?"

Fair enough. Seeing as you asked and all.

Your name is far too short. I mean, come on, it sounds like a sneeze. "Ah, aah, aaah, JWF!" *sounds of mucus being flung from sinuses*

There. Will that do?

I'm a newbie (here -- been wired since 1985 when I did my online communicating via FIDONet bulletin boards hosted on the computers of private citizens).

"Malista" has been my standard 'Net name for about four years. I'm afraid it isn't very exciting, really. It's the "polite" form of "Yes" in Greek (most of the Greeks I know say "Ne," which is the equivalent of "Yeah."). I chose it because it shortens to "Mal," which I like, and has a friendly sort of ring to it. It also wasn't in use the first place I needed a handle to log in.

'Case yu're wondering, the accent in on the first syllable. MAL-iss-tah. I'm the Keeper of f/stops because I'm a photographer, and it's all about exposure, baby! I'm the Keeper of Unasked Questions because *someone* has to take care of the poor li'l' orphings, and I feel sorry for them.

Mal

Well. When I first registered to h2g2, I thought, like many others, that it was all going to be terribly Humerous (with mandatory capital 'H') and went by the name Ubernoodle The Great.

However, that name was not only meaningless and tacky, it also suggested that I thought I was really great, which is far from the truth.

So I decided to rename myself Big Mad Mr T, as this is the name I otherwise go by on the Internet, and the name I use in The Pregnants (we all have obscure aliases, kind of like NOFX if anyone knows about 'em).

The reason (long story, this is turning out to be) I was called THIS is because for some reason the teachers at school always called me Mr Thair (not really that strange as it's my surname) and others Mr T, so that stuck. In order not to be confused with a certain other, more famous Mr T, I needed something to distinguish myself from him - and decided to add the 'ironic' tag describing me as both large and insane. Lies.

The stuff in brackets is described on my User Page and I can't be bothered to go through it all again here!

My actual name is just the MaW bit. Why that? Well...

1) It's pronounceable
2) It has unusual capitalisation
3) It's a contraction of my real name - the first two letters of my first name and the first letter of my surname - hence the capitalisation
4) It's nice and short
5) There's an enormous black hole cluster near Kessel in some of the Star Wars books called the Maw (not that I'm about to swallow you all up or anything, but sometimes it represents my occasional burning desire to absorb all knowledge, plus it reflects something my Electronics teacher said at one of those dreadful Confrontation Evening things where the teachers get to talk to your parents, where she said I'm "like a little sponge" and that I "sit there and absorb everything". More like a black hole, I thought, because quite a lot of what goes in never comes out again)
6) Hey, we all need to be called something!
7) As far as I know, it's unique

h2g2 was the first place I used it, but now it's also the name I use within the Wheel of Time game level editing/scripting community - not that I do much of that these days.

I have other aliases too - Yrd is used in a few places, mostly where MaW is already taken (including Slashdot). That was invented spontaneously when I needed a character name for a fantasy RP channel on IRC. Also in the world of roleplaying, I have two characters on one site by the name of Toram Erin and Eldhrin Tamwin. Yes, the second one is female... I'm not, by the way.

A misconception I've encountered twice now in different places (once here, once on another forum site), is that MaW is actually a take on the local form of 'Ma' or 'Mom' in, I think, the southern states of the USA, which has led to a couple of people assuming I'm female, and one person who asked if I was married to 'PaW'. She was quickly disabused of that notion.

Now, as for the rest, those are just things I picked up along the way. They vary from time to time, but at the moment I've got Guru, because I am one, Linux User, also because I am one (using Linux right now actually ), Minister for Magecraft, which is basically just something interesting to throw around from time to time, Keeper of the Penguin Mages, which if you ever met me in a roleplaying forum you'll probably understand something about, and the Muse of Dancing Ducks following events at the Christmas 2000 h2g2 meet, involving Zak the Duck.

Don't ask.

I'm going to stop now before you all fall asleep...

* looks around *

Oh dear, too late.

JWF

Anorak - one who is boringly obsessed with a subject of interest only to a small minority. From (I think), the anoraks worn by train spotters.

Let me just quickly correct you there Mister PP while simultaneously replying to certain Apathetic charges about MY name.
It is ~jwf~ . Not the full caps way you both shouted back at me.

Like the Prince formerly known as a glyph it is a pictographic representation of the three animal spirits whose souls are all I have.
I have never been human before this lifetime - that's why I find you all so fascinating - but have many times been an elephant, a dog and a bird since raptors started growing feathers.
You can see the trunk - j
legs and body - w
and the dog's tail - f
flying on wings ~jwf~

*train spotter - isn't that british riming (sic) slang for anarchist drug addicts - there was this movie...*