How did you get your nickname?

[dogboy]

In the Fall of '94, I moved from Idaho, where I have been living in a trailer, working as a field biologist on the Nature Conservancy's 'Silver Creek Preserve'...



...up to AK, to work for a truly legendary dog sled kennel, as a handler.  



...Anyway, one day my best friend from College and prep school...



...called the main house and asked where the 'dog' boy was - and they all thought that was the funniest thing they had ever heard, so they told me about this and it kinda stuck as a nickname.  

Then a few weeks later, we were having Thanksgiving Dinner on a -45F day, and one of the musher's elderly father (a famous musher himself) who was starting to struggle with his memory, couldn't remember my name (but wanted some gravy) said, 'dog boy, can you pass me that...' (apparently he had heard the joke earlier) but he was dead serious. Well... everyone else was in tears, myself included, so that kinda cemented that name.

When I ran into the SearchEngineForums (back in the day) I just put in my nickname in the field, never thinking I would stick around... then I think I screwed up that account, and they couldn't recover that name, so I just merged the two words together and it became 'dogboy', with a small 'd'... unless I'm talking about my formal persona 'Mr. Dogboy', because it just looks strange with the small 'd'  

I also sign things 'db'.  I especially like that combination of letters because:
- they are a mirror of each other
- When I was 4, I wrote my name in large thick red crayon letters, across our fireplace mantle, and my b's were written as d's, and it was one of my issues spelling my name, at first... one that my father was not particularly happy about:)
- it looks like a double barreled shotgun pointed at you, and the first letters of each of those words - double barreled - both start with 'd' and 'b', as well, and the second set of d and b's - double barreled - are transposed, which is kinda like a mirror that gives you the wrong image back... and as a dyslexic strategist, I find these things interesting:)
- the shape of the letters slightly resembles a simple way of connecting a 150lb tuna leader loop to itself, so you can tie a dog-sled together, without using a nut or a bolt, besides maybe the brake.

...how about you?

[dogboy]

...oh, those gorilla suits - I actually made the bodies on my mom's sewing machine, using me as my pattern, out of 10 square yards of gorilla fabric.  Then we bought the heads, hands and feet.

I'm on the right:)

[Chunkford]

Well.... my nickname in the real world is Chunk for reason associated with a childhood film and reenacting one of the famous scenes at secondary school, The Truffle Shuffle out of The Goonies.



Since then everyone calls me it, even at the various work places, apart from my parents of course. There are people to this day who only know me as Chunk and I've known them for years. It's also got to the stage if someone calls me by my real name then I know I'm in trouble lol.

Online though about a year or two ago, I wanted to 'brand' myself.
I wanted the works. Domain name, which had gone (unsurprisingly), gmail account, facebook name, twitter etc etc etc, all the main places. I knew it was an impossible feat, so I started brainstorming other ideas.
I came up with some weird ones e.g. ChunkyMonkey but after all the brainstorming, which if you knew me took me months, I finally settled on the very last one which was Chunkford because it incorporated my last name

BTW it's pronounced Chunk-Fud not Chunk-Ford

[Brad]

The first webmaster forum I signed up for everybody mostly used their first names so I just used mine.  When in Rome... Turned out to be a good choice when SE's were crude because they assumed any search for "Brad" meant Brad Pitt and that name was so powerful it completely drowned me out. Later, I was too mentally challenged to think up something cool sounding so just stuck with it.

[Drastic]

In my early twenties I went to the beach for a week with some buds. The movie Jurassic Park had recently come out.

The first night after shooting the last of the Jägermeister, one of my friends noting my size and aggressive demeanor started calling me Jurassic, in reference to the Jurassic Park animals. So, in the wee hours of the morning it stuck as those still awake affixed my new brand.

As each day passed.. less sleep, much more alcohol and beach laziness in general...

Jurassic became......  Jerassc.....  sometimes Jersc... often just a mumble of Jrsc... but eventually most often came out as Jrasic.

By the end of the week, and I think a few people didn't know what the hell I was being called (passed out early the first night or joined late), it somehow morphed into Drastic, which fit like a glove.

[jetboy]

Back in my long-haired glam days, the logo of the LA band Jetboy was the first thing I painted on my leather jacket.

[ergophobe]

So I've spent most of my life working from home, but I'm a social person and sometimes it wears on me. One day I said to my wife that I had "agoraphobia" (literally, "fear of the marketplace") because I didn't want to get to work. She said, "No, you're not afraid of the marketplace, you're afraid of staying home alone and working. It's fear of work you've got."

I thought, "Yes, I have ergophobia!" I immediately registered ergophobia.com and put nothing of use there except a few pages about rock climbing. In the climbing community, I became known as ergophobe and ergo and that was my usenet name are rec.climbing. When I got onto other forums, I just kept using it until I tried to use it somewhere (Flickr?) and found out there's another ergophobe - we connected briefly.

[BoL]

Pretty boring one for me, I just made it up on the spot without too much thought, and in those days where everyone was anonymous...

[littleman]

I came into SearchEngineForums totally green and wanting to learn some SEO in the 90s.  Right before I posted there was a flame war between two forgotten members.  All the tension made me uneasy, I just wanted some answers and didn't want to antagonize anyone.  So, I picked the most humble name I could think of on the spot.

[Woz]

We Aussies have a penchant for shortening names, so David becomes Davo, Sharon becomes Shaz, and so on. Hence, Woz is short for ....... 

[Zwart]

Wombat?



Anyway....... my nickname is the inverse (!) of my real last name.

[ukgimp]

BoL

I remember "brotherhood of Lan"

[BoL]

i still use the same one on wmw... bit of a throwaway name to be honest, I never thought I'd stick around for long

[Gurtie]

>> throwaway

mine too, used to use a variety of throwaway names and email accounts to do some online marketing stuff, signed up at SG with Gurtie and ended up still using it 15(?) years later

[Rooftop]

I always use different names in different places.  More to do with short attention span than some cunning ruse to cover my tracks.

Rooftop was made up on the spot when I was staring at the sign-up form here.  Gurtie had suggested th3core to me and I think I may have replied something along the lines of "the closest I'll get to hanging with a bunch of SEOs is watching them from a rooftop through the scope of a sniper rifle.  She assured me this place was different, but that sentiment was still in my head when I signed up.

Happy to say that Gurtie was right... and I'm not great with heights anyway.