I have an umbrella cockatoo who's 13 years old now. I started using BlueCockatoo because of her (because I liked the rhyme). My favorite color is really purple, but I couldn't think of anything catchy for that. I've had people from Australia ask me if I were from there because "true blue cockatoo" is apparently a slang phrase there. - Lindsay Donaghe
My name actually isn't my given name but my Hebrew name which I took when I got married. If the experience was life-changing enough for my wife to change her last name, it was life-changing enough for me to change my given name. Also, I've had a life-long hatred of my given name. And, nope, don't even ask (it's not that bad; it's a privacy issue). - Akiva Moskovitz
In middle school, I read The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. It was my favorite book. The term 'bit faker' was used in the book as Victorian slang for a counterfeiter of coins. ez$ gg son http://bit.ly/1ogSCl - Hao Chen
I originally wrote this several years ago at http://ontarioemperor.tripod.c... - "The Inland Empire needs an emperor. The 'Inland Emperors' are a band signed to a Seattle label. Hence, I am the Ontario Emperor." - Ontario Emperor
I adopted the handle bardo years ago while studying Buddhism. I became fascinated by the term and its reference to transitional states of being. Also used the name DJ Bardo while going through a phase of wanting to be a dance music DJ. Plus, the word itself is similar to my name Brad. As I got more involved online and starting trying to use "bardo" on many social sites, found that it was often already taken so i added my last initial and came up with bardow. - Brad Warren
Roman Totale XVII was my original and preferred pseudonym but it was too tiresome to type and explain to people. It's a line from a song by The Fall. - Andy C
In college, I decided to drop my handle from when I was in high school and start fresh. At the time, I was writing an honor's thesis on Friedrich Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same, and one of the big portions of that is the disposition of "amor fati," or roughly, the love of fate. Figured that was good enough, but apparently Amor Fati is some big K-pop star, so I reversed the letters, and got "itafroma." - Mark Trapp
i had to pick a video game handle, which people started calling me in RL. I chose Spin, because i do it a lot. Biking, spin music, PR, spin-out-of-control, head spin, was a pro webmaster in 95 (spin web lol), i can spin doctor, etc... it's a great word with a lot of meanings, all of which i connect and relate to for better or worse. It's been funny to watch people who've known me for years have to adapt to calling me @spin by way of twitter's architecture. I'm reprogramming minds on accident, & that's rad. - Eric Rice
mamund is my yahoo handle. i created it back when there was a six-character limit to yahoo account names[!]. i keep using it as my public handle. kinda nostaligia, i guess. - MikeAmundsen
What an awesome conversational subject! I (kfury) tried to get joy.com 13 years ago but someone was ahead of me in the 4 week line so I got fury.com instead. I usually use 'kfox' as my username but in larger systems it's always taken, so I changed it to 'kfury' which is almost always available. A lot of people think Fury is my last name. - Kevin Fox
My name's actually Brad. A lot of people, from years on the Internet, know me as Spinn. My last name is a Mc name, so Bradley McSpinn seemed to work as convergence of both analogue and digital world. - Bradley McSpinn
I was given the nickname "Haggis" from my friends after I attempted (and failed) at a Scottish accent. They named me "Haggis MacLoyless, the Scotch Bastard", which I then shortened to "Haggis MacBastard" and eventually just Haggis. I think it fits, because much like the dish, I am also full of crap. :D - Haggis (Sean)
Shey is short for Sheyhu -- my "real" first name. - Shey
i like to take pictures and Ive been on flickr since 2004 , plus since the name John is so boring I went with fotographic . Im a fireman in Canada , near Toronto . - fotographic
I'm with Shey - Yuvi Panda is short for Yuvaraj Pandian, my "real" name. - Yuvi
My two favourite things are books and tech. And I loved the play on words-from bibliotheque to bibliotech! - Evangeline
StriderZ - I used to go by strid3r, because Strider was my absolute favorite game in the world. Then, strid3r became a little too l33t for me and my IRC channel moved to freenode. I stole the Z off Dragon Ball Z and became StriderZ. MicroRahsheen is an obvious play on those tiny toys with the fast-talking sales guy. - Rahsheen(isSoAwesome)
@Evangeline by any chance, have you ever listened to Adam Sandler - They're All Gonna Laugh at You "The Beating Of A High School Spanish Teacher?" - Hao Chen
metaroll is a web service I programmed, with which it is possible to analyze and show the relationship between blogs based on their blogroll interlinkage. So, it's kind of a meta(blog)roll. - Benedikt Koehler
silas216: Was looking for a handle on AOL way back in the 90's, so I grabbed the nearest book (a Bible) on my bookshelf, flipped it open to a random spot and choose the first name I saw. The number used to be part of my address. - Steven Perez
Hutch and I share a commonality; except I am cma3. - Carlos Ayala
@Hao I was addicted to that CD in high school. I always got a kick out of that one, because my Spanish is terrible. I'll just stick with French, I suppose! - Evangeline
@Bradley A rose by any other name...would still be misspelled by most of the internet! I have to beg someone at least once a week to please, just go with Eve because it'd definitely not Evengalin or however they choose to mangle it. - Evangeline
I played D&D in middle school, and Rizzn was my character name. He was a kobold wizard. I got into the BBS scene shortly thereafter and used the name there, too. Obviously it stuck. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Thanks Lindsay for starting a great question. This was my favorite thread today! And thanks everyone for sharing your stories... - Mitchell Tsai
Srewolf is my last name backwards. Srewolf(Flowers) - Matthew
First name is Marco - middle is Aurelio - campaigns scare everyone with horror stories about people causing trouble for themselves and their candidates because of stuff they put online so was a little uneasy at first, loved Gladiator and decided to go with aureliusmaximus to provide a small buffer between my account activity and me - once i got comfortable I realized so long as I conducted myself appropriately I had noting to worry about - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
I forgot to mention mine. There used to be a BO3B error message on the Mac waaaay back, like system 6, I think. Somebody asked me how to pronounce it, and I told him, "The 3 is silent." Somehow the 3 migrated into my name. - Harvey Simmons
Acct name=Furry. Growing up, i visited my older sister in Brklyn on periodic wknds. I took the train up &, when I got to Penn Sta., I would go to the Info Counter & have her paged. And they would announce: "Leslie Roberts, Leslie Roberts, Polly Roberts is waiting for you at the Information Counter." But one wknd I told the woman at the counter my info and she paused & looked at me suspiciously. Then she announced: "Leslie Roberts, Leslie Roberts, Furry Rabbits is waiting for you at the Information Counter." - edythe
I was in college before I finally got what was so funny about paging "Mike Hunt." - Tad - just Tad
I came up with Dr. Offset after being particularly proud of my work one day. I ended up just using it all the time. Some days I feel like it sounds pretentious but I'm stuck with it. Other days I just own it. - sergiooo
@Mark @Edythe Fantastic stories. Well, I don't use a pseudonym here but where I do, its VestigialConsciousness. Back in college my name used to be 'TheLastHuman'; in contempt of mechanical people around me. This then shortened to 'TheMan'. I thought the article preceeding man would convey the intent but it didn't. I tried to think about what Do i think differentiated me from the mechanical people around and i came with consciousness - something that was a vestige for most. - Parth Awasthi
Many years ago my parents thought long and hard... and gave it to me. - jon burg
Panopticons is gone... but I gather you all by now know what it means - Noah David Simon
My handle is my name but I also use shreddies (a cereal in the UK for my Xbox Live Gamertag) and eskimo (this was a form of music that came out of the urban music scene a few years ago)! - Joe Dawson
i had to come up with unique names for my characters in a creative writing class in college - glemak was the name i created for the protagonist, a wizard - tolkien was big back then - i've used it ever since i've been online and own the domain which i use as a portal for all things me ;) - mike "glemak" dunn
