Dom (sorry, Dr Lepage) tells a story of his name and asks everybody to share theirs.
I can't resist and will share mine. But before you read it, I just wanna bet that no matter how many people tell their stories, there won't be any alike ones! People are so amazingly unique, that even seemingly straightforward process of making up an MMO avatar name is different for everyone.
So here is my story. Gazillion years ago, when I lived in another country, didn't speak any English, and Internet was a rarity, I got introduced into one of Russian MUDs (I think it was Aladon MUD, though I can't be 100% sure). I didn't play that much, but I was hooked for good. And of course, I had to come up with a name before I started. The MUD had name approval process, that is, every new name was checked by a player moderator (or god) and approved/disapproved within a few hours. If the name was disapproved the account was automatically deleted and player had to start it all over. So I really wanted to do it just right from the first attempt. After about 15 mins of brainstorming I came up with "Вайскор" (would sound like "Vice-core" in English). "Вайскор" was a loose derivation from an old Russian word for "army" or "troops". And it was accepted. A few years later I did learn English and moved into the US. I also got a laptop from my company and, of course, without Russian keyboard. Typing in Russian became difficult and I decided to switch MUDs. I picked one of popular English MUDs (I don't remember which one) and tried to register there as "Vaiskor" (which was letter for letter translation from "Вайскор"). The name got rejected with an explanation that it was hard for English people to pronounce. Well, maybe. Anyway, I wasn't in a mood for inventing completely new name and simply removed "i", thus getting Vaskor. It was accepted (and I am sure, Alex can confirm that it is easy to pronounce for English speaking people :-) ). Since then I started to use Vaskor as my online identity, so here we go. Incidentally, there is also a Hungarian name Vaskor, which has nothing to do with my nickname.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
History behind your name
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9 comments:
Username: Dead Ants
When I was younger I was some what of a fan of ants. At some point my mum bought me an ant farm and I was really enjoying watching them build their farm :)
At this time I had never played a multilayer game nor was I aware of their existence. The day RuneScape was published on Miniclip I signed up and had to think of a name, as I never had to sign up before I had to think of a name. I tried so many but all were taken.
I was still on the name page, but I get a shout from upstairs calling for me.
My dad had knocked over my ant farm and we had to kill all my ants!
So once I went back to RuneScape I had a name straight away and bingo! It was available.
Dead ants was chosen in memory of all my dead ants!
- Josh
(Admin - www.rs-videos.net
Stalk me - www.twitter.com/deadants)
NeobotXP
It was 2000
It was the turn of the millenium (not a matrix reference!).
Robots were cool (for a kid)
Windows XP was new (and cool!)
Username: Air Stallion
The day I got hacked I also beat a Lord of the Rings Video Game and one of the really powerful moves were Water Stallion ans it looked really beautiful. So, when my account got hacked and I tried Water Stallion, it was 13 character but, Air Stallion was 12 characters and thats how I made my name.
Originally, first initial, last name. It was easy to remember. I was never really into naming a character after anyone else because I wanted it to be mine. Also, I have a hard time grasping the alternate identity thing. I know its a game, and its a character, but I still wanted it to have some part of me in it.
I changed it with the recent name change option to something that amused me, but as well as I could remember (its also my Deadspin commenter name). I thought I'd do it just for a bit. However, with the headache it caused with Runehead, about 6 forums of re-registering, etc., I'm not going to change it again for a bit.
Favorite Character in the Animorphs Series... oddly I tend to latch on to the quirky characters of books (usually comic relief) as for some reason they are more enjoyable to read... Aximili (and slight variations) has been my internet name for eons...
THERE'S A T IN IT I SWEAR!
Xela is Alex backwards, not long enough so I went for Xela The King but that was too long. Quick shortening and voila!
You're Russian? I'm amazed that English is a second language. I'm a native speaker and I never suspected for one second that you weren't. Your English is very, very good. :D
Anyway, back to the plot. Merch is Welsh for daughter. Gwyar is an early name for Morgan Le Fey. I'm therefore the daughter of Morgan Le Fey.
The story behind why that is my name stems from my childhood obsession with the Arthurian legend. Even as I wrote the above paragraph, my academic brain was kicking in and producing sources both in favour and against the fact that Gwyar was Morgan. Even the use of the name Morgan Le Fey is suspect. LOL
That's by the by. As I'm a lazy git:
Wikipedia entry on Gawain 'Gawain is commonly considered identical with the Welsh hero known as Gwalchmei ap Gwyar... The Gwyar (meaning "love"[11] or "spilled blood/bloodshed"[12]) in Gwalchmei ap Gwyar is likely the name of Gwalchmei's mother, rather than his father as is the standard in the Welsh Triads.[13] Matronyms were sometimes used in Wales, as in the case of Math fab Mathonwy and Gwydion fab Dôn, and were also fairly common in early Ireland.[13] Gwyar is named as a female, a daughter of Amlawdd Wledig, in one version of the hagiographical genealogy Bonedd y Saint, while the 14th-century Birth of Arthur substitutes Gwyar for Geoffrey's Anna as Gwalchmei/Gawain's mother.[14] Other sources do not follow this substitution, however, indicating that Gwyar and Anna/Morgause originated independently.'
Plus the personality which always fascinated me, in Arthurian legend, was Morgan. She was much maligned over the centuries. ;)
Thank you all for sharing your stories! Just as I suspected - everyone had a unique way for choosing a name ;-)
Merch, to be precise, not Russian, but Belorussian. Russian is spoken in both countries.
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