Ok I’ve seen threads on character names, but none on display names. (For those not sure, it’s the name on your forum posts. Mine is Astral Projections.7320). After reading the forums for a while, it sometimes seems that people have chosen an account name that reflect some part of themselves. It might be unconsciously done, but I sometimes wonder.
So I started wondering, why did you (yes you) pick that one display name out of all the possibilities?
I’ll go first, nothing deep here I’m afraid. Astral Projections is the name of my Ritualist in Guild Wars 1 and my Mesmer in Guild Wars 2. I chose it because it’s the character I got to GWAMM in Guild Wars 1 and she was my favorite of my alts in that game.
It’s what I’ve used almost everywhere online since I first signed up on a forum about 15 years ago. I think at this point I actually have more friends who knew me first under this name than my real one.
It’s also a mash-up of my real name (Katy) and my main characters name (Danielle) so it seemed appropriate.
Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).
It’s one of my usual online handles. “Bluestocking” is an archaic term for a woman who was considered over-educated, unfemininely intellectual, and basically unmarriageable. I rather like it (although my spouse disagrees with the last bit.)
Nate = Short for Nathaniel (oldest son)
Ana = Anastasia (daughter)
Abe = Abraham (another son)
Note tried with 2 A’s in Anabe just did not look right (anaabe)
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
—Napoleon Bonaparte
I was so desperate to play GW2 I just chose the first nickname that came to my mind. Totally unrelated to GW and one of the my biggest regrets in this game -_-
Why fix the Necromancer for free when we can charge $$$ for the Revenant
-ArenaNet
Old name, isnt even mine, I was playing some obscure MMO where you could buy characters, and I’ve always hated leveling, that game was beyond boring to level up, so I bought myself some nice mid level character. It had this name, I liked it.
After that I looked it up, turns out it stands for “he who is strong” so ever since then it has been my namer tag. TUrns out somebody had picked the name already though, but not the username, until this day I still look for he who owns the name so I can claim it mine.
[GoM] Gate of Madness Server Elementalist|Guardian
Legendary SoloQ
It’s supposed to be a play on the term “trigger happy,” and describes my complete inability to play FPSs at the time. I’m not as horrid as I used to be, but I haven’t made much improvement.
This is the first name of my main character, who has a history in various other MMORPGs and tabletop RPGs stretching back more than 20 years. The name is one traditionally associated with one of the Wise Men who visited Jesus as an infant, and I heard it in that context as a kid and thought it (as well as Gaspar and Balthezar, the other two traditional Wise Men) sounded like a rad wizard name. Later on I did more research about the etymology and a couple pretty excellent actual real-world people named Melchior, and discovered that I was 100% correct in that assumption.
It also helps that it’s pronounced the same as Melkor, who the elves called Morgoth, who was Sauron’s boss in the wars that caused the Gods to remove themselves from Middle Earth and send Wizards and such as their representative instead. That’s a pretty sweet fantasy pedigree, overall.
Former Guild Wars 2 fan. RIP, ArenaNet’s integrity.
Daisuki [SUKI] LGBT-Friendly Guild Leader | NA – Jade Quarry
I’m usually really sweet… but this an internet forum and you know how it has to be.
/i’m a lesbiab… lesbiam… less bien… GIRLS/
My dog’s (yorkie) name is Ozzy. When he was tearing around the yard one day we commented that he was like the tazmanian devil. That morphed into Ozmanian Devil. I stole it for my screen name.
Mine comes from a combination of two characters from a previous game I played, Princessfig and Lilly. I thought Figlilly sounded rather Mary Poppinsish and all I can hope is that it isn’t some dire insult or name of a body part in a language I don’t know.
It’s one of my usual online handles. “Bluestocking” is an archaic term for a woman who was considered over-educated, unfemininely intellectual, and basically unmarriageable. I rather like it (although my spouse disagrees with the last bit.)
This is the coolest thing I’ve learned all week!
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
I chose my display name because it was the first character name I ever came up with online about 8 years ago. It came when I was trying to get the name The Man, but it failed, and started going with various variations. The Man = Da Man = De Man = Delmain.
I played an MMO where dwarves were the only playable race. Everybody had either a dwarf-related joke as name or Gimli or some Tyrion Lannister (before the series) reference. I went into intensive researches about dwarves in LotR (read: 5 minutes) and decided that Frór is a good name. I kept it ever since.
My GW 1 Character name is like the OP’s. Also she is the name of the main female lead in a series I was writing but stopped. She also was my main in GW 1 so this makes her my GW 1’s descendant. They were also both elementalists. She is my GWAMM and my 50/50
Also every MMO I’m in has at least one red haired chick named this.
Yumiko Emi Ishida 80 Ele, Hikari Kyoko Ishida 80 Guard TC-NA. Active RPer of NA megaserver.
In any MMO my guild tends to call me by my main character for the game. I knew before the first beta that I would be Donari Mal Di Bette, as I was recreating a previous tabletop character to fit a friend’s planned adventurer’s guild (had to drop the “o” from “Malo” to make it fit, and I was careful in beta to never name him fully in case of name thieves). In fact, we used the 2RP site and then our own guild site to do extensive RP before and during beta, and Donari developed nicely through all that.
Thus I chose Donari for my account name so people would know it was me whatever alt I was on, without them having to memorize some odd nickname.
Hmm screen name i used 15yrs back when i started playing mmo’s/online games. Just like how my main character is my Persona/Shin Megami Tensei(game series)→GW1 carryover name.
Because I am a Wake Forest alumnus (Demon Deacons are our mascot…), and it’s been an online tag/name for over a decade now. Also helped to form the idea that all my characters’ names start with a “D.”
It’s the name of an old DnD character of mine that became my RL nickname among the members of that gaming group.
The name itself is a reference to Pallas Athena, for reasons that I won’t go into other than to say that it involved the very abusive mixing of house rules and 2nd Ed ADnD Psionics rules.
Sarcasm, delivered with a
delicate, brick-like subtlety.
I used to have one name in every game until GW1 where I couldn’t use it… It had my real name and some numbers (which gw1 didn’t like). That name had been through a bit… Plus my interests changed. Now I’m Zero Day/ZeroDay in games.
Zero Day (taken from Wikipedia):
A zero-day attack or threat is an attack that exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in a computer application, meaning that the attack occurs on “day zero” of awareness of the vulnerability.
When I got my first motorbike (a Yamaha RXS100-N), I was keen not to be stuck with a forum name tag based on a little Ronnie Ring-Ding bike. I was just known as my real name on IRC biker chat channels. I bought my first Moto Guzzi, a V50, so became GuzziV50.
Later on, I survived a MASSIVE motorbike crash (nearly 100mph, 65ft into a field) unscathed so was invariably known as GoldenB****x, but one friend suggested GuzziHero, and that stuck.
Most people do not know my real name, which is good because I despise it.
—-
It’s one of my usual online handles. “Bluestocking” is an archaic term for a woman who was considered over-educated, unfemininely intellectual, and basically unmarriageable. I rather like it (although my spouse disagrees with the last bit.)
Interesting. There is a lyric in a Nick Cave song that goes “She’ll be wearing those blue stockings, I’ll bet”. It helps to explain that lyric. Cheers!
“Riiko” is what most of my friends call me so it kind of stuck as my default MMO name.
Its a rough translation of the meaning of my actual name into Japanese.
i.e. : “Child of the Forest” .
Astral Projections is the name of my Ritualist in Guild Wars 1 and my Mesmer in Guild Wars 2. I chose it because it’s the character I got to GWAMM in Guild Wars 1 and she was my favorite of my alts in that game.
