Where did your /nick come from?

[DJ Jackalope]

All of us have insane names that our parents never intended.

I was looking for a name to use in a chat room about 13 years ago. My parents gave me a shirt that had a jackalope on it that was sitting on the top of a pile of laundry on the floor. From then on, I was Jackalope. When I became a DJ in '96, that presented me with the obvious choice of switching names or going with the one I had and that the electronic world knew me as. I stuck with the 'lope.

*edit...after seeing Deviant's post*
The Orbis23 / Orbiszine thing you will be seeing with my name more often was an ezine I did around 1996-1998. It's what results when you work solo graveyards at a Kinko's. Orbis is short for Orbis Terrarum / Orvis Terrarum...you know, those big cool world maps that include the whole place on a flat page. Orbis23 is a club night that I ran for 2 years and the name stuck to be my rave/party production company. Hence, Jackalope ov Orbis. (The ov is a whole nuther story back from when the original pH10 lineup was about.)



Where did your's come from? Did you give it to yourself or did someone name you in a wild mishap? Just something I've always wondered about all of us.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

my answer comes in two parts...

Deviant is easy enough for me to trace back... while growing up i was surrounded by no shortage of stuffy, conservative adults (country club, straight GOP ticket voter types) who had no shortage of criticism for what they saw as immorality and dilinquency (things that i recognized simply as my generation's tolerance and appreciation for homosexuality, intoxication, and non-traditional belief systems as well as music and art that wasn't mainstream)... but these same people (my parents were occsaionally among them) were soo stuffy at times that they wouldn't even use profanity or overly-harsh language to condemn my generation's morals, music, etc. i can recall quite clearly that on more than one occasion my mom would use the word "deviant" as if it were some sort of epithet. "deviant sex" or "deviant clothing" etc. i was always silently amused by this... when you consider the true definition of the word, to "deviate" is merely to differ, to turn out of an established or recognized course. when i was little, my parents made sure to teach me that there was nothing inherently bad about being different and that i should be tolerant of others. it was interesting observing society's tendency to maintain the status-quo, however... particularly as people age. as a nod to the fact that i've always felt best when bucking the norm (and since i believe societies and civilizations are at their healthiest when they are packed to the gills with diversity and differing opinions, beliefs, and lifestyles) i opted to take the nick of "Deviant" some time ago. (i should note that this wasn't a jab at my parents at all... both of whom i love very much and have a healthy and happy relationship with, even if i don't call as often as i should.)

Ollam needs a little more explanation. As to how it actually came about, i'm not positive but i'd be willing to bet that the addendum to "deviant" was born of necessity since IRC, instant messenger, etc. all likely had the singular nick taken. instead of adding a series of numbers like everyone else my age tended to do (or adding bullshit at the beginning and end of a nick like the kids today... just ask |Vx^jazon_pimp^xV| in your local #pokemon channel) i tried to think of an obscure reference that would be meaningful and not likely to be duplicated elsewhere. i decided on "ollam." (back then you couldn't get more than a handful of results by googling it so i was confident that i wouldn't be treading on anyone else)

pronunciation note - everyone gets it wrong when they say it, so in an attempt to stem the tide of kooky verbalization let me clarify something. "ollam" is a celtic word. the anglican variant tends to be spelled "ollav." it is pronounced this latter way in moden english. (think of almost halfway between "ollav" and "olaf" actually.) don't worry if you've gotten it wrong in the past, you're certainly not alone.

in ancient celtic tradition, Ollam was a rank of scholarly recognition. i've read it as being defined in a variety of ways, but almost always the context tends to suggest it applies to indivudals whose lives focused on learning, the arts, and philosophy. i've read that often Ollams were travelling teachers, who went from place to place and town to town, speaking with and educating people whom they encountered. In one text I saw a note stating that, while Druids (the highest rank of the celtic faith) achieved their status in part by mastering every one of the great number of folk poems (which were passed by oral tradition) in the culture, Ollams had learned many but not all of them. I liked this, as well, since the title could be said to apply to individuals who seek knowledge but recognized that there is always more that they could be learning... that they do not know everything.

in a (very large) nutshell, that's the summary of my nick's history. and while i don't think i can take credit for it, the word "ollam" appears on more web pages nowadays and generates a significant number of google results. heh, maybe what little exposure i've had at cons led to people saying "what the fuck is his nick about?" which just started the snowball rolling down the HTML hill. who knows.

[renderman]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Mine started as a Joke about 10 years ago in High school.

At that time I was heavily into 3D animation (lightwave and 3dsmax) and wrote the curriculum for the school. I also was into video production for the school, we had some pretty kick ass gear and turned out some quality product (pep rally crap, 'about the school' vids for middle schools, etc).

The problem was that I'd get some teacher wanting some animation work done for a video or project and they would give me a short timeline. At that time, a p100 was fast, our animation lab had 6 of them. Lightwave had a network rendering feature that would split the frames between multiple computers and compile the output back onto the host. I had a penchant for large projects and big files. I would occasionally have to take over the whole lab and kick everyone off in order to complete a project for the school.

At the time, Pixar had released Toy Story and the buzz was about 'RenderMan', thier proprietary rendering engine.

When I'd have to kick people off to finish a project, they'd say 'Oh, the RenderMan is at it again' or some such thing and the name stuck. It grew into everything being from the Renderworld, 'Rendervan', 'RenderCat', everything. When I found out I had no artistic talent and got into networking and security, the name stuck despite not having anything to do with animation for years.

I'm a firm believer in staying with the name that you choose or are given in this community. Those that change every other week tend to have something to hide. It's a name that everyone knows me by, so I might as well stick with it no matter how unapplicable it is now.

[noid]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I won my nick in a high stakes poker game. I also won the title to several oil fields in Texas. Oh, and this giant foam cowboy hat.

Actually, I was given the nick by another hacker named Sledgehammer. I used to be on BBS' as 'The Punisher'. As anyone who was into the BBS scene can tell you, just about every BBS anywhere in the world had its share of Batman, The Punisher, Gandalf, Frodo, Aragorn, Bilbo nicks. As a result I would frequently find that my nick was taken when I tried to sign up for a new BBS. While over at Sledgehammer's house (incidently he got his nick from the TV show, not the tool) one day I was trying to register for the Western Frontier BBS and was trying to find a nick that wasnt taken. He suggested 'The Noid' in reference to the current (at the time, circa 1987) Dominos pizza ad campaign. I had a rep in the local community already as 'one of those damn hacker kids' and the 'Avoid The Noid' tagline seemed appropriate. Since then the handle just kinda stuck. In fact over the years I have had corporate business cards with 'noid' on them instead of my real name, I've had coworkers refer to me as 'noid', and its gone out of the computer arena as now everyone at my gun club calls me 'noid' (infact, it says that on my membership badge). However I just go by 'noid' now and no longer sign my posts

-Th3 /\/01D

[Beginner]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Beginner sounded better than noob, and I had had just REALLY gotten into technology in 1999 and I just kinda used it as an excue for a while for lack of knowledge. It doest really apply too much anymore, but I chose the screen name and I am stuck with it. I have a variety of other various nicknames/alises and such, I just chose not to use them.

[Z^2]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Usually I just ask random people for a name every time I join something new because I haven't found anything that has stuck with any large group of people and that has been truly awesome yet (because I suck at naming nouns). ...This one was a random mutation on a nickname one of my hippie friends gave me (Bright Star).

But I answer to "Z" in any case as a default. That way I have a whole coordinate axis and a bunch of physical constants .

[Voltage Spike]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

My story is much simpler ... but, then again, I chose it when I was very young.

For the first twenty years of my life, I sported spiked hair exclusively. It wasn't that I liked the style, it was just that it was easy to do and I had a lack of imagination. Since everyone I knew, adults and kids, also had a lack of imagination, I grew into the nickname "Spike".

I really started to get into the BBS scene (using my dad's account) when I was about six. My dad, not wanting to be known for having the intelligence of a six-year-old, encouraged me to create my own account and had the foresight to tell me I needed a handle. Spike wasn't particularly clever, didn't have a computer slant to it, and, most importantly, was already taken by someone in the area. Then, as if a bolt of lightning, it struck me: Voltage Spike! (For the curious, I think The Wall was the first board where I used that name.) I was so pleased by my clever melding of the real world and the abstract, computer world that I've kept the same (public) identity ever since.

[theprez98]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Very simple story: I had several different names back in the BBS days but none of them stuck. Then while I was in college (circa 1994-5, when all we had was gopher, lynx, pine for email, and then NCSA Mosaic) I ran several student organizations and amazingly enough earned the nickname "prez." At some point after that I registered a yahoo account and appended the meaningless '98' behind it, and its been all downhill since then (I think I started with 99, but it was taken, and thus 98).

Strangely enough, I've become very protective of the name and scoff when I come across a place where someone has already taken the name (unlikely, but does happen). I also hate seeing it Theprez98 or ThePrez98 and very much prefer theprez98.

Finally, my name has also spawned the1stlady98 (wife) and the1stmom210 (mom).

[Chris]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Hmm..I don't know. You'd have to ask my parents.

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I can't even *remember* the name I used to go by when I ran my high school's BBS.

And Chris...i meant Roamer...you goon....

[Chris]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I can't even *remember* the name I used to go by when I ran my high school's BBS.

And Chris...i meant Roamer...you goon....

Heh...ooooh....sorry

Roamer is a pretty lame story actually. I have a tattoo of a skeleton standing over a gravestone with the Metallica lyric "My Body Lies but Still I Roam' carved on the gravestone. I needed a handle/nick for BBSes/Video Games/etc and Roamer was born. It tended to fit well with the wireless stuff I was doing more than a decade later too so that worked out well.

[eris]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I have always been fascinated by chaos and chaos theory, I used to practice a form of chaos magic and Eris is the goddess of chaos among other things so that's the first connection.

When I got into tabletop and live action gaming some form of Eris or other aspect of her was used as a naming convention for my characters. (circa early 90s)

When I got into BDSM public play, I needed a scene name, and I felt that Mistress or Goddess was too over used. Therefore I added Lady to it. (circa mid 90s thru 2000ish?)

When I joined the "computer enthusiast" scene (around DefCon 7) the name traveled with me, only without the formal portion of course.

On a side note, many people throughout my life have tried to nickname me but nothing ever stuck. I figured, at some point, I had to just choose one myself or forever be asked the grating question "Do you have a nickname?" Almost always followed by "No? O, I bet I can find one that fits you!" and then have to live thru myriad attempts at lame nicks. Because I hardly smile, someone thought it was uber clever to nickname me "smiley."

[signcarver]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

For twenty years I worked in the theme park industry for various companies as a glass blower, crystal cutter (engraver), and more recently as a woodworker (cut out and carved in names and signs) so most people referred to me as the signcarver.

[Nikita]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I have had several nicks in my relativly short life, matter of fact i can say none of my friends or family referred to me by my "real" name for many many years. Always different variations and handles, and the online handles and nicknames given me by friends and chat buddies never stayed longer than a few weeks to a month at a time. It always felt to me like i didnt have a f-n name or a past. Handles I have had that tended to stay lingering the longest were Sevin & Whisper but they didnt catch on with everyone.

But...... How it came to be Nikita, I was really sick of the lame ass handles people kept trying to give me and they never stook, people would say "Oh i know you should be zerocool" or some shit. Nikita was said, I thought it over, I liked it. I had been called that before in the past and it really represented me for many reasons, I felt like it wasnt just a handle to me. It reminded me of my grandfather joking with me.
So sitting at coffee one night when asked yet again "what should we call you?" I slammed my fists down on the table and yelled really loud
" NIIIIKKKKKIIIIIIIITTTTTAAAAAAAAAA" ( Mimiking a pencial stabbing- as seen in the original french version) Nikita stuck from then on. I think the scene helped etch it to memory. And no, I do not nor have I ever watched the tv show and my biggest f-n pet peeve is when I am introduced and i hear " Oh Le Femme...Nice to meet you" And yes I know your cousins sisters best friend has a dog named nikita Good for f-n you.

Now for the past 5 years or so all my friends, some of my family, work, buisness cards, key card, my credit report, all have nikita on it. I am known by that so well that hardly anyone knows its a handle or atleast forgets that it is. I want to change it legally to Nikita, but I am just gonna wait until I get married, save myself having to pay the fee twice. And no, I dont give out my "real" name. Because I dont respond to it anymore, to me its not my name, and when people ask if nikita is a handle I instictivly say no.

[_multithreading]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Well, once apon a time I wanted to write an IP scanner/SYN port scanner. It was slow so I decided to look up on multithreading. I then realized it looked more cool with a underscore in the beggining. And *BOOM* _multithreading was born.

A cookie to whoever gets my last alias here xD