So tell us how you got your forum identity!

[Wombler]

Most of the regulars here have known each other here for quite some time now but even so, I've always noticed a lot of unusual (or very cool) avatars and intriguing forum names, and I'm sure you all have too.

New members are joining the community all the time and recently everyone has been changing their avatars due to the larger size limits.

So I thought it might be entertaining or at the very least interesting to ask everyone why you went for whatever forum name you chose and why you have the particular avatar that you do?

I'm sure there are some interesting stories out there that we'd all love to hear, so have a nosy at everyone else's responses here then join in the fun and tell us your own reasons.

Err... I suppose I'd better start the ball rolling though given that I started the thread. :bigsmile:

So here's the big reveal!! :bigsmile::bigsmile:

Forum Name:

Truth be told, I wanted something that reflected my online personality so I chose to go for something that seemed friendly, approachable and would encourage people to interact.

As a child I watched a TV series here in the UK called 'The Wombles' based on the books written by Elizabeth Beresford.

Womble was already taken as a user name so I adapted it slightly to Wombler.

Avatar:

Well once you know the story above that's an easy one, it's a photo of one of characters from 'The Wombles', 'Orinoco' to be precise (for those that are familiar with the TV programme)!

I had a photo of 'Bungo' prior to that!

Wombler

[Arachne]

Just want to say brilliant thread idea, I love knowing the whys and wherefores of things (aka nosey).

I remember the Wombles - re-runs obviously, I’m not quite old enough to remember the original airings

OK, here we go, short and sweet:

Forum name: I wanted something slightly gothic-sounding, and thought of spiders -> arachnids -> Arachne. It also fitted 'cos I also have an interest in Greek/Roman mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne

Avatar: I’ve had a few, but the latest one combines my love of all things gothic and Hello Kitty.

Neeeext…

[Albert]

A long time ago, my user name was wallace0134. I still use that name on various sites to this day…initially, I used it for my email address (possibly also other user names). It was my first own email address, and my first real online presence! At the time, I was probably thinking I couldn’t wait to be a teenager (13), and I couldn’t wait to be in high school (04). I think I jumbled the numbers up in ascending order due to my (now deprecated) love of math, and I am pretty sure there was a conscious decision to not include 2, as '01 was probably about the time I was really establishing an online presence for myself…didn’t want to ever forget that.

Later, I adopted another name on here, which I can’t remember…and it didn’t fit. I was trying to be myself, and thanks to the close-knit community, the admin wasn’t averse to changing names once more…so I became “Albert”. It’s my first name. I think the name I had before that was something involving my middle name (or a nickname version of it). If that’s true, folks who have a better memory than me could probably piece together my full name.

Admin (Tax, I think) had to delete an old user who had the name “Albert”, so I probably wouldn’t change it again for all the shiny optical drives in the world.

Now, avatars… I don’t remember all the random animated GIFs I had before this; it was all about being silly and trying to smack a little sense into people. A little aggressive, I’m sure. But in the time that passed, I was called Catbert, Dogbert, Dr. Catbert, and all other sorts of variations.

My last avatar before this was thus Dogbert. A few searches later, I found Saint Dogbert, and his desire to smack the stupid out of people with his staff. It remained my avatar for ages UNTIL…

My avatar now is a caricature (of me :p), done at my previous college/university by an artist who visited once a semester, I believe. It was a spiffy way to represent me without it being a direct picture of me. (I believe I was honestly copying StormJumper’s decision to make his avatar more personal, while trying to not directly copy him. No shame whatsoever. )

And that’s the choppy, abbreviated story of my identity on here.

[ADDENDUM] I now employ the name “A. E. Wallace” in various forms across the Internet as an extension of my choosing to just use Albert on here. Occasionally, it’s my full name (Facebook display name), but typically, it’s the abbreviation above (Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook URL/email, YouTube uses a variation, select other sites use variations) that you’ll see. Rarely, you’ll catch wallace162x11 sending an email from Gmail, or logging into Apple accounts…it was just a nice variation to shake things up.

[StormJumper]

OK I’ll jump in too I guess…

My user name was the identity I used for my Ham and CB radio a long time ago which it has just stuck to me like a nickname, as far as my avatar goes I have always been fascinated about the stories and myths surrounding Count Dracula and I got the image off the door-knocker of of his castle.

[B]SJ[/B]

[Kenshin]

Name: I looked for names on Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary. In a Korean name, there is really only one name mostly consisting of two Chinese-Korean characters. The family name is not regarded as a name - meaning you cannot call me Shin or Mr. Shin though most Westerners have done so for centuries. Since my name starts with G or K (it used to be K, but G is also correct now), I wanted the simplest English name starting with K. Kay and Ken looked good, but there was the Kay, a Japanese friend of Bill Gates. I liked this name because an Arab, a Japanese, a Korean, a Russian, almost anyone can pronounce and type it easily.

Avatar: me and my daughter in 2004. Her weight was 2.0 kilograms at birth on April 18, 2004. She probably weighed 7kg in that picture. She enjoyed watching these threads on the screens then, so maybe she’ll be back here somehow ten years later.

[marloyd]

well mine is simple it’s both my wife and my middle names Marie and Lloyd go figure.and the avatar as some of you have notice been changing around alot and settled for a blind cat(blind pig records -so blind cat)do I look like Ray Charlies

[Kerry56]

Mine isn’t exciting. I was already using Kerry56 on some forums when I joined here. And I use it on a lot of others still. Its just a combination of my old football jersey number and my first name.

My last avatar was a drawing made by J.R.R. Tolkien and reflects my interest in fantasy novels and movies.

Current avatar is a combination of Tax’s description of me one time and my penchant for wearing sweaters in the Post a picture of yourself thread. The quote from Tax went, “…afraid of Kerry? That’s like being afraid of a teddy bear. ”

[Sean]

As far back as I can recall, I don’t think I ever used a nickname on this forum, so as you can imagine, Seán is my actual first name. The ‘á’ is treated as a different letter to ‘a’, so there is another user called ‘sean’ on the forum that ain’t me.
When I first joined CD Freaks, my avatar was . I use to watch the Animaniacs cartoon all the time and liked the Skippy squirrel, so I used it as my avatar here, including on a few other forums. My favourite cartoon use to be Garfield & Friends, but I never found a Garfield avatar that looked right sized down to 48x48 pixels.

About a year ago I finally figured it was time for a change after having the squirrel avatar about 8 years, so the current one is of my pet cockatiel.

During seasonal periods such as St. Patrick’s day, Halloween, etc. I usually change my avatar temporarily for the period, such as a leprechaun, creepy spider, etc.

[cholla]

Mine pretty simple I like cacti . One of the cholla species grows native in this area .
So I just thought it made a good forum name.
Also if pronounced correctly it is an name from an old western movie . Branded .
Alan Ladd plays Choya but this is a msispelling of cholla.

[samlar]

It the name my parents on mars gave me

[Jesterrace]

My identity was forged long before I joined this forum. I didn’t want some uber-geek ID and I was listening to this album a lot at the time:

The Jester Race

I found the avatar on the In Flames website a while back and it just spoke to me, the jester devil just seemed to fit perfectly. Good think I snagged it too as it has since disappeared and I have never been able to find it again.

[Wombler]

Wow I only posted this last night and I can’t believe the number of great stories in here already!

Keep them coming folks as these are all fascinating!

[B]Wombler[/B]

[Mr_Belvedere]

Name:

Mr. Belvedere

Basically it’s my very earliest memory of watching something on television. The name stuck, the program didn’t.

Avatar:

It’s a cute version of Chthulhu (or however you spell it) made by O Abnormal from www.commissionedcomic.com

[ChristineBCW]

Just my name. I tried this on Facebook and was inundated with idiots who believed the existence of a woman’s name was their invitation to demonstrate their low intelligence levels. Very illustrative.

The avatar is of me fishing, something I’d never done before marrying Hubby.

[DrageMester]

I’ll quote myself from a similar thread six years back:

[QUOTE=DrageMester;1442708]"[I]DrageMester[/I]" in danish translates to “DragonMaster” in english.

I’ve been playing roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons for 20 years now (wow, am I really that old?), and I have been a Dungeon Master for most of that time.

The term Dungeon Master translates awkwardly into danish ([I]Fangehuls Mester[/I]), so I invented the term Dragon Master ([I]Drage Mester[/I]) instead, which shares the same acronym.

Hence the danish term of DrageMester as my alias and the dragons head as my avatar - no, that’s not a photograph as you might have thought. [/QUOTE] That’s all still true …except for the part about “20 years”.

[Arachne]

[QUOTE=DrageMester;2645539]
That’s all still true …except for the part about “20 years”. [/QUOTE]

Of course…it’s a lot longer now isn’t it?

[olyteddy]

I fashioned my handle after the passwords that came with all those ridiculous AOL disks that used to arrive seemingly daily (Sidebar: at one point AOL was the second largest consumer of Floppy disks, second only to Microsoft). I’ve been using it for at least 15 to 20 years now (I think I actually used it as an AOL subscriber). I still occasionally find myself having to change it to Olyteddy1 or Olyteddy2 when I try to register at a website I haven’t been to in years…Who can remember a password that long?

[Arachne]

[QUOTE=olyteddy;2645661]…Who can remember a password that long?[/QUOTE]

Me! One of my passwords, that I’ve had for quite some time, is 13 characters long! Keep meaning to change it to something less of a PITA to type, but…

[DrageMester]

[QUOTE=Arachne;2646577]Me! One of my passwords, that I’ve had for quite some time, is 13 characters long![/QUOTE] Hmmm… let me guess:
VerbatiMCC004
1234567890123

[StormJumper]

[QUOTE=Arachne;2646577]Me! One of my passwords, that I’ve had for quite some time, is 13 characters long! Keep meaning to change it to something less of a PITA to type, but…;)[/QUOTE]

All the passwords I use are also 13 characters long and I never use the same password for other log-ins, I even have some that are 16 characters.