Last night it came up in an unnamed co-operative game (although I’m sure you could guess its identity) that the people in the party weren’t all aware of the origin of each other’s gamertags. As goofy as it sounds, you can actually learn quite a bit about people and the way they think when you dissect their gamer handles. It tells a bit of a story that perhaps you didn’t know. As anonymous as the gamer handle is meant to be, it’s funny how it can connect you in that way once you know the meaning behind the selection.
For me, Pwnocchio is pretty much the handle I use for everything. It mostly comes from my love of obnoxious puns, plus I used to like shouting “I’m a real boy” in a high-pitched voice whenever I would connect to games. That was several years back, though. And of course, I’m more sophisticated-like these days.
So that being said, what about you guys? What are your normal gamer handles, and what do they mean? In addition, what about your GamerSushi account? Is it the same as those? Go!
Well, my handle for everything these days is “Lubeius” or some variation thereof (Battlefield games is Lube182 out of tradition).
It started in Star Wars Galaxies, where I had a character called Evom Liera. When my friends started playing, I made a new toon to level with them. I called this guy Lube Starstalker in a less-than-PC reference to Luke Skywalker. When we quit SWG because it became a shit pile and moved to WoW, I changed it to Lubeius to make it sound more old-timey. I’ve used that ever since.
I use “unsquare” pretty much everywhere. I got it from a song called “Unsquare Dance” by Dave Brubeck. It’s a cool little jazz song that uses tap-dancing and handclaps as percussion. Here’s a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yExwkQYcp0
Well, SkubaPatr0l was my backup for PSN after SaMuRai92 (or some variation of that) was taken. I was kinda going through a phase where I loved the samurai and their history. Also, The Last Samurai was awesome. SkubaPatr0l has stuck since then and it just came from a random thought going through my head. It doesn’t really mean anything, but I do like swimming the odd time. I’ve thought of changing it if Sony ever gave us the option (there was a while I hated that name as I wanted a clever or funny name), but now I think I’d gladly trade half my trophies JUST to keep it. Well, maybe a quarter of them anyway!
My IRL friends are also similar in that they’d keep it. Some of them have their name or a pun on their name or some (like cannonfodder or ThonBarrettBlade) just thought it was funny (ThonBarrettBlade requires some knowledge of local colloquialisms to get the joke FYI).
My handle is always “doyourealize”, after an excellent Flaming Lips song. I always went with song titles for my handles (“broompeople”, “yourhoodratfriend”, etc.) and album covers for avatars when I choose one, and “doyourealize” just stuck. I just like music, I guess, and “Do You Realize??” is an incredibly thoughtful and meaningful song.
“dp” is just my initials, but I think they look cool together. I’d use that as my handle if I could, but you need more then 2 letters.
My gamertag is L337 Commando which I came up with after goofing around after all my other ideas were either taken or lame. It’s actually quite awesome, and now whenever I hear “Commando”, even if it’s on the news and they’re talking about Israeli war crimes or whatever, I’ll listen up as if they called on me.
For most things on the intertubes, I’ve remained faithful to “Cossack69” because I am of Cossack decent and 69 is an easy number to remember, mostly in part to its sexual connotation that many people are unaware of. Google it. lol
My gamertag Drell Assassin is kinda obvious, definitely shows my love for Mass Effect and more specifically Thane. I’m very specific when it comes to gamertags because I have to have one that has perfect spelling and grammar. My GS name is the same as many of my online names and I got it from my IRL nickname, Beans, because my last name is Bean. The SK part was some stupid clan thing from a Gamebattles clan I was in a long time ago. If it wasn’t such a pain to change all of my online names that have SK in it I would.
[quote comment=”13646″]My gamertag is L337 Commando which I came up with after goofing around after all my other ideas were either taken or lame. It’s actually quite awesome, and now whenever I hear “Commando”, even if it’s on the news and they’re talking about Israeli war crimes or whatever, I’ll listen up as if they called on me.
For most things on the intertubes, I’ve remained faithful to “Cossack69” because I am of Cossack decent and 69 is an easy number to remember, mostly in part to its sexual connotation that many people are unaware of. Google it. lol[/quote]
I’ve never met anyone not who didn’t know what 69 meant.
On Xbox Live I am Edgewalker81, which is a bad ass character from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. He’s a mysterious character who wanders the Shadow Warren, but I love him.
On PSN, I am Starkiller81, which was the original name of Anakin Skywalker in the original draft of Star Wars.
My Handle actually came from when I first played CSS my friend recomended it to me and it was right before DMC4 came out so i was like “what the hell” and went with Nero it’s a pretty kickass name if i do say so myself and it is still my psn tag and will probably be on everything until another name intrigues me.
also Eddy hearing you shout “I’m a real boy” whenever you entered a game would be hillarious.
My first handle was captainQ because I was twelve an my last name is quinn. After about 5 minutes in counter strike though i was being called captain queer. So in my defiant and heterosexual nature I changed it to lovetheladies and within 5 minutes love te lassies and every other variation came out as well (gotta love the online community). And I just stuck with it haha.
Well my first name is Quinn, and my last is glebe so i use it. its sort of unoriginal but i originally shared accounts with my brothers so thats what i have now. Occasionally I’ll use Koopa on CSS, but im mainly xbox now so g1ebe it is
I play as Julez. Yeah, not very interesting is it. i keep a .nus at the end sometimes because my very first handle in cs 1.5 was nuse. I was 13, and I had misspelled noose apparently.
Your picture reminded me of this lol. It’s only a minute long, give it a watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRzP0eq3Tgw (NSFW?)
Dude… the story of my online handle was one wrought with determination, sweat, and lots of taken names. I basically had all mine original ideas taken, so I look at the book I was reading and it was Dune. Who is the main character of Dune? It is Muad’dib. So, in the end, I chose Klokwerks, cause it was open and I was like whatever. Then, a year later, renamed myself Muad’dib cause I was doing one of those name games in the scoreboard. Since I was lazy everyone on my favorite server kept calling me that so it stuck. Ever since I have kept it that way but put [Muffin] as my short lived “clan” of my friends.
My gt, MAJOR PAAIN, was my old account on America’s Army back when I still played it. I just carried it over into Xbox, and since the MAJOR PAAIN account was my friend’s originally, I have no clue to it’s origins. Odd.
Well when I first got xbox live for free because my 360 red ringed, I wanted to play halo 2 online, but I had lent it to my friend. So I took my sisters blockbuster card and went to hire it but realised I didn’t know the password. I rang her and asked and she said her password was “Drazic” which apparently is a character from one of her favourite movies.
So when I had to choose a gamertag and had no idea, Drazic randomly popped into my head and I added the 11 to end because it was taken. 11 is my birthdate and favourite number (ladies legs 😉 The alternating caps are because I was 15 at the time and thought it was cool.
Nowadays it’s always Drazic online for me and if i’ve been owning noobs and they say Drazic out loud I like to shout “Thats Doctor Azic to you” (Dr. Azic)
Ha! Loving these stories. Keep posting.
Also, @dp: Do you realize is such a great song.
It really is funny how these handles can stick with us and we continue to use them. I will probably still be using Pwnocchio ages from now when my teeth are falling out.
For most of my gaming I use the name NovaCascade and it wasn’t till you put this up Eddy that I really thought about where I decided to pull it from. But if I remember rightly, the first time I really needed a gaming name was for TF2 that I got through the Orange Box. But since I had played the original Half-Life not long before, the resonance cascade sounded like a great basis for a name, but just taking it as a whole would be cheating. So I took the awesome sounding cascade and paired it with the power of a supernova (I’ve always been interested in space) – hence NovaCascade. My gamersushi name is just a simple variation on the same name.
Benign1 – ah, the love/hate relationship with my tag…mostly hate at this point. I chose the handle benign1 back in the days of DWANGO and Doom 2 deathmatches, mostly due to some friendly ribbing about my lack of skill, and partly to see how many people actually knew what it meant. Turns out most people thought it was short for Bennigan. Anyway, every time I’ve tried to ditch it over the years, I’ve either not been able to get the new handle I’ve finally come up with (yes, I’m that guy that takes 15-20 minutes to name RPG characters), or I’ve felt the need to keep the same handle so old friends could track me down. Maybe I’ll change things up next time around…
Gadfly: “used by Plato in the Apology to describe Socrates’ relationship of uncomfortable goad to the Athenian political scene” the term, Gadfly, was taken from Greek mythology. the social gadfly, as used by Plato, is a term for people who upset the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or just being an irritant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_gadfly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadfly_%28mythology%29
I don’t have a 360, so no gamertag guys. Lemme just go with my username (futuregametag). It went from SHARPii3SNiiFF3R back when “1337” was cool (7thGrade) to SharpieSniffer (10th) and, when I forgot pswds, I made a new account: dapurplesharpie. Easier! 😀
Two of my handles stem from a game that I really enjoyed and played a lot, STAR WARS REPUBLIC COMMAND. The game had a kick ass soundtrack example here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhF7M1a5H5Y&feature=related So being interested in the soundtrack I looked up the lyrics thinking they were Latin or something like that turns out it was some made up language they did for the game and one word VERDA I thought was cool so I just took away the A out and create VERD. Also a chapter of the game was called Troika so I though it was cool and just added 1138 to the end to make it Troika1138 if your a star wars fan you know what 1138 is. Troika it turns out is Russian for three also its a name of a formation you put horses in to pull a sled. My xbox live name is THERMICWHISPER, my brother and his girlfriend were watching me set up my xbox live account and saw the name in the suggestion list and thought it was cool so I picked it.
My handle is Dunkelschwamm, which is German for Dark-Sponge. It is the only good thing that I got out of one year of a high school German class.