how did you come up with your online alias?

[milo]

For this name, I just smooshed together the fact that I really love plants and gardening, with a little creature that I feel some kinship with. I love plants, and the vibe that I want for my personal site and such is the cobbled together efforts of a little feral thing, with little care for what others think as it digs around in the dirt. I also like the way the word 'gremlin' sounds better than goblin.

Haha that's amazing. Not sure if you're aware but you have a song! My favorite band has a song called Garden Goblin.

It's kind of a wacky song and not normally what they sound like... But whenever it comes on I can't help but get into it.

milo was my nickname in high school. All my friends called me by that name so I started using it for online handles. When myspace became a thing and people started using their real names I moved away from using milo online and soon only a select few called me by that name.

Within the last few years I started to re-adopt the milo moniker and have been getting back into posting on forums and building sites and using milo as my secret alias or persona that only exists online. :>

[N]

theres like. a really big N on my wall

[thistlequest]

I came up with this alias last year after feeling like I had outgrown my previous username. I was trying to come up with something that I felt could toe the line between big dramatic fantasy and smaller more whimsical fantasy. I chose "thistle" because I've been drawn to that flower as of late and because when I looked up the flower meaning online and I found out (though who knows if this is even credible) that it represents "resilience, strength, determination, protection, and pride." As someone who has been described as "scrappy" and "tenacious" I thought it was quite fitting, and it's also aspirational in a way.

I chose "quest" for a much simpler reason, that's the part of it that gives it a fantasy feel! Since this is my handle on all my art accounts I needed it to double both as a fitting username but also potentially a fitting brand name should I decide to start selling more physical items. I needed it to fit anything I might want to do and leave room for me to expand creatively. I want to do a lot of different things but I know for sure that whatever I do is going to be put through a fantasy filter first so a fantastical username was important.

That being said I also do go by my real name online, but it's not my legal name so I feel that it's also kind of an alias. Both names, first and last, are taken from people that are important to me in my family. I sort of use it and "thistlequest" interchangeably online as part of my online persona. Though I'm considering also adopting "Thistle" as an online nickname-- but that gets complicated because I'm a comic artist and I've started to personify my psyche as a little fairy that looks like me and is named Thistle. So then being called Thistle would intersect with that narrative device in a way I'm not sure about yet. Idk lol

[yam]

so when i made my roblox account my dad made the username and he made my username yambonaut1. so since then ive just been using yam online because i like the name and ill probably use that until i get off the internet so im gonna be using it a lot :3 

[toribytez]

"Tori" is my irl nickname and "Byte" is the primary handle. "Toribytez" is a pun on "terabytes"

[axlraimi]

I have three online aliases I use

axlraimi: my website related one. I don't like it much anymore, but its my staple.   it came out of my own name (axl) + the name raimi, for sam raimi (I love the evil dead!)
then my art one: jarvilkka. this one's cool. sam lake, the creator of alan wake, is finnish and his non-translated surname is ''jarvi'', which means lake. then there's ilkka, the actor who plays alan wake in alan wake. also, lakes are incredibly relevant in the story of alan wake, so it's a triple entendre.
axlphobia/phobic: its because im bad at games- so i started this joke with myself that I wasn't bad at games, but games were scared of me and it was their fault.

[Y2KStardust]

Y2Kstardust is the same to me as a tumblr URL - easy to see the vibes of who I am + something that I don't mind being called or something I like. Y2K is the vibes, stardust is tacked on because I have a special interest in space that shines through basically everything I do 

I also tend to attach name(s) that I feel comfortable being called - usually over here on the smallweb I use one of my OC's names, Yoona, bc my IRL name is what I use Elsewhere and it's. Also part of my irl name now, the one downside to re-naming yourself based on a username 

[FirewireCompatible]

i saw a trans symbol edited to have the firewire symbol and i kinda attached to firewire as a cable and thought it'd sound cool to be like "oh im compatible with that cable"
if ye dont know what firewire is

[Oceansandy02]

This is actually based on my discord handle! I started out with the alias Sandy to avoid using an IRL, and then associated that to the ocean, which is now my current alias.

So, I combined these two together, and added the numbers 02 to represent Oxygen (O_2) for my username.

My other usernames were Aquaruby_35 (because I like blue and gemstones), Memer999 (because I liked memes and sposting), and Prime21 (prime sounded cool and 21 is a funny number), the first one being on a deleted app (PopJam)

there are also some more usernames, but it involved IRL names and nicknames, so I wont be sharing it.

[EdgyRabbit]

Uh... I named myself after a Rabbid... From the hit game "MArio +Rabbids"...  So i put them togethor but changed the edge to Edgy!

I like the game mostly for how they depict my husband, Rayman! hes so cute in the game.. <- me to Rayman

[bugholder's epiphany]

I was watching my friends play Totally Accurate Battle Simulator one day and they got a cool screenshot of a character walking off a cliff, so I took that screenshot and made fake album art for it:



The name just kinda came from looking at the vibe of this image and now here we are!

[randomtangent]

i guess mine is uncommon enough so i stuck with it 
i don't like it all too much, so i use my username instead of my nickname (even though my nick is literally in my username)

really i don't have any online aliases even remotely related to my real life names (whether it be preferred or irl nicknames, i still don't want them online!!)
it's mostly just so i can draw a line between the real world and the digital world 

[Bugs (RetroInsect)]

My username I use in most places is RedHotCaterpillar its a play on Red Hot Chilli Peppers, a band I was pretty into in highschool. I made it when making my bandcamp account because I wanted something music related and it just stuck! I made my website before that, so its something different!

I was briefly into homestuck after binge reading it when I was like 15 and I downloaded an app that imitated pesterchum, the chat application in the comic. I used a name generator to make my pesterchum username (because it has a specific format) and I got something to the effect of RetroInsectoid. I shortened that into retroinsect when I was coming up with my url.

My user for this forum is BugsBites and I don't know why I chose that, I think I just thought it sounded cool but I wish I had made it RetroInsect to match my website. Live and learn I guess because I dont think I can change it now lol     

My main nugget of advice here is to pick something that you like the sound of! It doesn't need to have some super creative meaning or meaningful origin. You could try finding something you like and taking inspiration from that. It also might be good to see what you like in other peoples usernames to pinpoint what you want in yours.

Good luck with your usernaming journey!     

[Malice]

I got it from this dress that Amy Lee made! I ended up naming my site after the full dress name. I wanted a subtle Evanescence reference that was a bit more unique and easy to remember... I used to go by Moth, but there's about a bajillion Moth's out there, then I went for Lacrymosa since that was my favorite song, but nobody could spell or pronounce it, but Malice is juuust right