Your nickname, and you, your feelings and your friends!

I've been using Yakumo for games, and online since I was 15, so.. lets just say over 10 years now

I never really particularly liked or felt attached to the nicknames I'd been called by others at school etc.

I'd felt at the time, it's not the nick that counts, it's what you make of it, choose something you like, and make it yours.

I chose Yakumo on a whim, I needed something, and didn't want to use my real name to play a game, I quite liked it and liked the character I took it from, it was years later I found out it's true meaning (eight clouds) which I also liked, but don't really feel it represents me any more. I really beleive in 'make it yours' but right now I guess I feel it's a little out of place, for the first time I feel perhaps it's not right for me, and where I'm going (wherever that may be..) and maybe I should try something a little different, I still sometimes attach 'unr' (from my old quake2/3 clan) to the end of it if 'Yakumo' is an unavailable choice, or if something requires a surname, but that is really a life I've long left behind now.

<edit: ok, much as I'd like to deny it sometimes that whim was largely based on 'Yakumo' from an anime called 3x3eyes, I liked the character, though I wish he'd opened his eyes, he made me laugh, and kept dying in stupid ways and respawning so seemed very apt for the game I was about to play with my friends (doom or Quake 1 I forget), I also liked how protective he was of Pai, I feel that way about those I care for too>

So that brings us to this topic, how did you chose your nick, how long have you used it? have you/do you change it? are you happy with it still? do you feel it represents you?

And to make more of a conversation of it,or if you don't want to talk about yourself, please comment if you can on how you feel about the nicks of other posters in this thread, (or any other HoP'er) and how well you feel their nick represents them

maybe I just feel I need a real, complete fresh start, bundled in with thoughts of maybe finally leaving where I've lived for 7 years. But with Spinners is where I want to stay

I've had the nickname Meeko since I was 15, I'm 23 now. My friends thought I could be shy and kind of mischievous as Meeko is from Pocahontas, but when I warm up to someone I'm all crazy and friendly. The name stuck and so many people call me Meeko it's not even funny.

I do like the nickname and do feel it represents myself. My real name is Jenn/Jennifer and I know so many other Jenn's it doesn't seem unique enough, ya know?

I've had people call me other nicknames but it doesn't seem to fit. Meeko fits myself, or variations of the name such as Meeks, Meek... and I've sometimes left my name behind and introduced myself as Jenn, but people always remember Meeko, so I end up using it again.

I love the nickname, and even certain family members call me it.

Another nickname I have had since birth, that only my family calls me it (I will not allow anyone else to call me it to say the truth) is Weazie. I was born with severe asthma and almost died, so my parents nicknamed me Weazie because I wheezed all the time when I breathed. I hated the name when I was younger, but I love it now, it's a part of my family and past. I still won't allow friends to call me it though You know Weazie the penguin from Toy story 2? I have him tattooed on my back

my friend robyn and i were heavily into Dr Seuss when we were in high school. It was also rare, if not unheard of, to see me in any other brand of shoes than Dr Martens.

Robyn Dubbed me the FoxInDocs cuz i'm foxy and i wear docs. I love the nickname, i think it suits me. I also love it shortened to just Foxy

Fox in Docs, that is absolutely awesome!

Well, my name is Sam, but most of the people I grew up with called me Sambo, and it kind of stuck. The Flux part comes from an interest in complexity theory and evolution, and the idea that everything is in a constant state of flux. On top of that, I also write trance music under the name State Of Flux, so the online handle is an amalgamation of the two.

oli seems to work quite well for me, not to worried about any of you lot, or anyone, no matter how freaky they are knowing my real name. i mean so what if a freak knows my name?
sometimes i wish id gone with something a bit more creative, (and can see the appeal of doing so if your name is something like bob or fred ) i used to use the names shalabi a bit and also agim, both of which i like, but i still reckon oli is cooler.

Pssst... do a search. :P

'Oli' sounds like a move

Neon - stemming from the remanants of my glowsticking days

Shaolin - acknowledgement of my oriental heritage (despite not knowing any martial arts - unless you count the Glaswegian Martial Art of F-Yu) At the time I had a shaved head so the Shaolin thing was purely aesthetic.

Some remember I changed my HOP-name to 'Juxtaposeur' acknowledging my more artisitc (ie. pretentious) side and alluding to putting things where they don't belong but people complained so I changed it back (mostly when I remembered that J.A.C went to the trouble of making an engraved key-ring with 'Neon Shaolin' on it and realised that people know me by that name now). I changed it after seeing videos of Bender - another Chinese guy who DID know martial arts and I felt unworthy of having 'Shaolin' as a name. Oddly Simian commented that I WAS worthy of it after being able to do an turning anti-spin weave with doubles staff whilst hula-hoopinh (I don't remember that being done that shaolin temples)

Sounds like you're psyching yourself up with a wholesale life change, Yakumo! (if you're thinking of moving, move to Brum! Lovely spinners here, fo sure )

Anyway, why 87wt2gxq7? Comes from a couple of years back when I was thinking about ideas of name, identity and meaning.

What is a name? Fundamentally it's an arbitrary string of 36 alphanumeric characters. It’s meaningless and anonymous unless you attach meaning and identity to it. But is there something essential about identity, is it independent of the arbitrary name, or is identity shaped by how you refer to yourself and how other people refer to you?

So as an experiment, when I joined my first online forum, I wanted to choose as abstract and arbitrary name I could think of, to help clarify what I think about these things. I also sorta had an idea that it would be amusing if names looked like randomly-generated passwords. I was wondering if this was so, would people recognise each other by the individual numbers and letters, or would you recognise the shape and not parse every character?

So I mashed my fingers on the keyboard a few times to get a (pseudo-)random collection of letters and numbers, tweaked it a bit to get a shape that I liked, and settled on 87wt2gxq7.

do you feel it represents you
well isn’t that the question I’m trying to answer?
Short answer: yes. kinda. insasmuch as I’ve got to be represented by some name or other. And it’s the product of my thought at the time I chose it so in a way it does represent me, at that time. But I’m not really thinking about those questions anymore as I don’t think they can really be answered, at least not by my little experiment. So in a way I'm not satisfied with the name. Oh well, stuck with it now!

I'm just using my real name.

I've been "Bobbi" for most of my life - I've given that name to myself as a little kid when I was very sick and insisted my parents called me it. Then a friend in primary school overheard, and from then it stuck all the way to uni. And since "Birgit" is quite a common name in Germany, it was always already gone when I did online stuff there.

But now in the English-speaking world it's actually a rare name (which nobody can pronounce!) so I can use it. I guess it does represent me, in the way of leaving a lot of stuff behind in Germany, including the old nickname, and having started over completely new but still as myself here

you have to really believe that you can make a name your own to use a random string of alpha-numeric characters. As humans we remember things much better if we can attach some meaning to them. I can remember names and poems and even games of Go but remembering phone numbers is much harder because the numbers have no meaning.

Thats why people call you Control V which I find hilarious. Doesn't the name "Control V" indicate to you that people need a meaningful name to remember?

To cut a long story short, I turn "rouge" at the drop of a hat

When i first signed up to hop i just used my email address sandyfsx cos i couldnt think of anything else and sandy was already taken. I never really liked sandyfsx its just my name with some letters after it. Then i realised id signed up to hop about 6 months before and forgotten about it so it was actually me who had taken sandy! since id used my new profile i kept the sandyfsx one and just changed the name seen on screen.
Also after going to falmouth i noticed a few people getting a bit fed up with being reffered to as their hop name so i just thought it would be easier to use my own name, luckily there arnt that many sandy's out there so i get it to myself.

i like "control V" it suits you

It works online just fine, and it's an interesting idea. I think if more than a few people did it it would become a problem though. To me you're the guy who's a random string of characters. If there were five people who were random strings I would get very confused. In the real world it's a problem too. Nobodies ever going to go "Hey eighty-two W T two G X Q seven, what are you up tonight"

You're right that I recognise the shape of your name, but can't remember exactly what it is so I have to copy and paste every time I refer to you.

@Fine_Rabid_Dog search for what exactly, I did, the "what dose your name mean" and several others do not achieve what I am attempting with this thread

Thanks for your replies, keep em coming, don't forget to comment on your HoP friends nicks!

eg:

The Boy G : annoyingly only able to be shortened for speech to 'boy' or <ack> 'g'. I used to think it was terrible but now I finally know what he meant by it, felt daft as hell it didn't click before. I guess it suits his Go pimp persona well, shameless though it is

Neon Shaolin : it's just you man, it suits you to a T, it fits your look, your personality, it couldn't fit better unless you actually went and learnt some form of soft kung fu or something

Likewise, Sandy, it's not just your real name, it just seems to fit perfectly. Oli's ace too and fits similarly. If someone's pissed at being called their HoP name, at a spinners meet, then they definitely chose the wrong name and should try to change imo, that just seems karmicly so very, very wrong.

87wt2gxq7 you're certainly identifiable! and you have made it you online, it's just sadly unpronounceable, and ctrl-v doesn't slip into conversation easily either, 'control' may work but I'd keep thinking of you as the 'control subject', 'v' would be a bit sci-fi

Vixen - yup!

MCP - it was hers, and she made it all hers again, fits so wonderfully with the russian contact staff avatar she's using atm too.

bluecat, fluffynapalmfairy though I keep forgetting to call rob 'carwash' when I see him

Hyperlight : (made it his) awesome & toys

MrChutney : in the best possible sense, it's daft, he's funny, it's great, I bet he likes his curry too

a LOT of these will be biased by their HoP names being my first experience of them, but in general the HoPpers I've met have chosen, or found their way to, very well chosen names, or have made them their own well.

I've never had a nickname.

Seye is a play on sounds (I'm sure I've posted this a hundred times but...) S + eye = Si.
I've been using it as a name for DJ'ing and as a screen name for nearly 10 years now. My parents even write it in birthday cards as a bit of a joke.

Its pretty handy having a screen name that sounds the same as your actual name. It causes a lot less confusion when you meet people.

so "seye" isn't pronounced as it would be in english then?

you have a pasty complexion?

i'd call you "sey" if i was thinking in english, and "se-ye" if i was thinking in romanian, japanese or spanish

I blimmin do now! Born and raised in shiny Singapore so I had a tan for 21 years. But since I moved to the UK where the sun shines for about half an hour each year I'm pastier than an uncooked pastie.

it does state it's short for 'the boy genius' tho.

mattscott, i guess your sick of the mascot jokes now? I think it's cool tho

@M33k0 - the weazie thing & the tattoo sound very cool

na, it popped into my head, and then I genuinely thought it was very cool, but thought it would

a: surely be taken..
and
b: be a joke you'd had done to death.

I hope it serves you well

I have a different name for each forum I use, and there are at least 6 at the mo for all my different hobbies.
Being pretty thick, and with a short attention span, I need to pick one that's specific enough to remind me what I'm doing at that time.

What's in a name anyway?
Surely people don't judge books by their covers, do they?

Hi i'm PK.

It is short for PK Ripper, guys that were BMXers in the 80's will remember what one of those are, for those that don't



I don't ride anymore but i do have a unicycle and i miss my old PK... oh why did i have to snap the frame

You probably know my real name but every one calls me PK even my mom some times.