How did you decide on your handle?

I did a search here and didn't notice the topic was already presented; if it is, just delete this one and refer me to the original, but I'm curious how everyone decided on their handle.

ATNO/TW
When I first got a computer and internet access, I knew zero, zip, nada about computers and the internet other than how to sell computers. I started seeing stuff about people writing web pages on their own and this HTML stuff. So I did a google search and located a nice little tutorial at an adult community. It was a wierd community -- not all the normal porn and stuff you'd expect to find, but just a bunch of folks having a good time. I met some people and enjoyed myself, so I created a little handle Night Owl. After a few months of snooping around the place, I discovered if I registered a membership I could get my own little webspace and make a web site of my own. However, I found that an older member already had my Night Owl handle, so I sorta decided by default to use A True Night Owl (I was always up until the wee hours back then). Just to spruce it up a bit I added some tilde's to it so the actual handle was A True ~~~Night Owl~~~ ( I love owls and always thought the tilde's looked like wings).

What a pain in the ass to type in. The end result was that my friends started refering to me as ATNO, because they, obviously, also felt it was too much to type in. Hence the ATNO part.

Later on as I started developing my design skills another designer friend who had started a design help desk asked me if I would take it over. I agreed. He had already established a handle which I assumed - The Webmaster. This same friend is the one who I co-host our sports board with. He is like a brother to me (again, an amazing thing about this beautiful internet -- I've never even met him! *lol) Before long, people just started refering to me as TW.

Although I have one or two other small handles I use here and there, those have been the two that have meant the most to me, as both of them helped me progress to establishing a new career. Isn't the internet amazing?

So there you have it. That's how ATNO/TW was born. Just a compilation of my two favorite nicknames my friends have given me. For short I just go by ATNO -- I liked it so much I chose that for the name of my web domain http://www.atnoproductions.com (ATNO Productions).

Well, for me it's like this.

My last name is Thys, that turned into Tisse as a nickname. Now, I have a brother and his friends started to call him that as well.

Since I was the real one, I had to change it so that became the real tisse. Since there are lots of sites that don't allow spaces (and the hotmail addy either for that matter) it became the_real_tisse.

Voilà



ps: just in case, apparently tisse means to pee in Norwegian, and yes, been made aware of that
Guess I am the one and only real tisse

Musik is German for music, and well I am a full on music fan and half German.

Mein Vater ist deutsch und meine Mutter ist Australien. Ich war in Australien geboren.

I interpreted the first sentence (I think - I have about 75% German blood -- but don't know the language). I think you said:

My father is German and my mother is Australian.

Is the second sentence -"I was born in Australia"?

If I got that right?, I'm pretty happy with myself! *grins

P.S. Thank God for German music!

yep you got that right!

Cool! I be happy! (musik)

Uh my first name is Brandon and my last name is Heyer and well the _ just looked cool.

I had just watched a British comedy show and they had said "Schmeg". I thought it sounded funny and put a 007 at the end because I was 12 or 13 when I started using this handle.

well I got this nickname because I break allot of things, tools, computers, stuff like that. I tried to get the handle destroyer, but somebody already had that on MSN, so I thought about it for a few minutes and came up with ModernDestroyer. Computers being modern stuff that I occasionally broke either intentionally or accidentally, usually playing quake 3 arena, I would die and then I would start pounding on the keyboard If anybody walked in while I was playing quake 3 they would turn around and walk out

My name has multiple meanings.

One of the meanings is getting caught up with technology and how it seems that no matter how recent you get something another thing comes out that is better so it is pretty much like you are beta testing everything before they make it better.

And another meaning is basically like soul searching. It refers to looking within yourself and discovering who you are. If that still doesn't make sense, think of "lost" as not knowing who you are and "beta" as being the version of yourself that still needs fixing. Help at all?

Those are what my name means to me and why I chose it.

It is nice to see many of you have cool meanings behind your names. My name really has no cool meaning. I simply grabbed them for practical purposes. I use Bigwebmaster as my handle because I own bigwebmaster.com. I chose bigwebmaster.com because I really wanted webmaster.com but of course that one was taken. So I then started looking for other website names with the word "webmaster". I liked BigWebmaster because Big is only three letters so the majority of the word is still webmaster. I have been to a few forums before where people start off criticising me because of my handle. They think I chose that name because they think I have an ego problem so they usually aren't too friendly with me at the beginning. One guy acutally came to my site and saw one of my scripts (guestbook script) and found every single problem with it just to prove that I was not the Big Webmaster. Its all good though

I also think its great to see how people got their names. It's actually quite facinating. I've had so many over the years, they all tend to revolve around either 'musik' or 'maniac' lol

well, don't you?? i agree with that 100% hehehehe jk

i actually have to give some credit to bigweb for my identity (he might
dispute this, but i like my version of the story best ) --

I used to use a web design company name of iDezigns. However,
through a poor decision on my part to join forces in business with a
family member, the name was absorbed into his company. I'm a sucker
for change and new things, so it didn't really bother me too much to
find a new name. In fact, I welcomed it! I was excited to think of
something new because I had that name for a couple years anyway.

*flash forward - 9 months later*

ok, now i'm obsessed. this whole ordeal of finding a new name was
consuming me, and taking up a lot of my day's thinking time.

I still hadn't found a name that i was 100% happy with. I chose a few
and used them for a few months, but my thinking and brainstorming
never ended. I actually spent HOURS at a time some nights searching
and browsing sites for inspiration and name ideas. Bigwebmaster was
one of the people that actually participated in these exercises of futility
and frustration, and even then we could never seem to hit a homerun.

Well, at one point, I just decided to sit down and write out all the words
I liked in terms of computers, myself, and web design. After carefully
narrowing down to a few words, the word FLUX was there.


fusion was also one of my words. I like the idea of fusing different styles
and formats into a web design. I liked the sounds of construction the
word gives. so, i liked flux best, because it incorporated all these things
in a single word.

However, nothing I tried with the word flux was any good. In fact, I
actually gave up on it.

Then in a last-ditch, "this is the last time" effort, I went searching again.
I was chatting with Bigweb, and he was making fun of me for my lack of
a name, so he started rattling off a bunch of ideas that we had never
thought of before. The discussion turned into how we have worked
together for quite some time, and it would be cool if our names were
both noticeable and unique, but fit together well. So, i started using
the prefix un- on the list of words I liked. The idea came from his own
enterprise name of unmelted (which i always tell him i'm gonna take one day ).

I came to flux and said out loud UNFLUX -- BAM! -- it hit me that that
was it. no question, 100%, that was my name. All the philosophy I had
mulled over countless times in my obsession for an identity had just
exploded into one 6-letter word, and it was absolutely PERFECT.

UNFLUX - the only constant is change

it was time for me to settle on a name and stop changing. making it
permanent and forever = U N F L U X. It has a nice techy sound to it,
while having some dignity and stability. All of these things are important
to me, so I just knew that was it.

I've never even thought once about a different name - not once.

well, my nick, kalbal

kalbal

kal-bal
my name is Martin Kelly, in my primary school my m8s kinda picked it out & now im stuck with it lol
"Kal" is from the "Kel"
"Bal" is from the fact im a bit tubby lol, it supposed to be kelbel, but looks better lol

on websites i have began yo use <<Nucleo>>...not on here tho cus u all know me as this, well, i picked nucleo cus it sounded cool, it just kinda popped into my head. i look on a google image search and found out nucleo was a comet. being named after a comet sounds pretty cool

My handle is the one I always use and is just an abbrevation for my football team.

Aaron