Sorry if this is too personal to ask, but I just couldn't resist
I spend a few minutes on these forums each day, and keep seeing the most various nicks, so that made me curious...
Mine actually comes from Arthur C. Clarke's novel: Childhood's End .
In it the aliens appear on earth, guidig the whole humanity. These aliens, if I remember correctly, do not eat, do not sleep, and are very advanced compared to the humans...one of the alien's name was Raschaverak, although it wasn't a protagonist, just a sideman. This was the german vesion of the book, so the original one might was written differently.

>This was the german vesion of the book, so the original one might was written differently
the same except a 'sh' and not 'sch'.


Anyway, on a forum my name was 'black mage' and somewhere during a conversation on toast 'toaster mage' came up and I took the name cause I thought it was funny (and black mage was pretty generic and needed changing anyway).

My nick is completely unimaginative. It's just the first letter of my first name ('s') and the first four letters of my surname ('hang'). I got this as my UNIX user account name back in my university days in -97 and it was short and catchy enough that I've used it on the net ever since.

Funnily enough, the nickname kinda migrated to IRL too and I've even received snail-mail (as in paper!) once addressed to "shang".

Why, mine is from the greatest webcomic ever written, of course! http://achewood.com/index.php?date=11052007

I've had a long history of food related word-play names, so this one seemed like a logical choice. The fact that the comic in question is vaguely related to Japanese is only a bizarre but awesome coincidence. Occasionally I regret taking on this name, but the reactions it gets makes it allll worthwhile.

It's a variation on an abbreviation of my full name, which is Brandon Timothy Smith. About 2,510,000 results if you google that, so I'm not exactly worried about privacy.

In the early days of the web I needed a nick name for my email address. I asked my friend and he suggested "sprutnik", since my primary interests at the time were astronomy (sputnik) and drinking (sprut: Danish slang for booze).

brandon7s Wrote:It's a variation on an abbreviation of my full name, which is Brandon Timothy Smith. About 2,510,000 results if you google that, so I'm not exactly worried about privacy.

Ever heard of tracking down IP adresses?
Anyway thanks for the reply guys! It was interesting to read.

sprutnik Wrote:In the early days of the web I needed a nick name for my email address. I asked my friend and he suggested "sprutnik", since my primary interests at the time were astronomy (sputnik) and drinking (sprut: Danish slang for booze).

That makes sense. I've always wondered what it could be like being totally drunk (but still conscious) in space, in weightlessness

Raschaverak Wrote:

brandon7s Wrote:It's a variation on an abbreviation of my full name, which is Brandon Timothy Smith. About 2,510,000 results if you google that, so I'm not exactly worried about privacy.

Ever heard of tracking down IP adresses?
Anyway thanks for the reply guys! It was interesting to read.

Since only the mods have that information, and since my IP address is dynamic (and since I'm posting from a work network), I'm definitely not worried.

Mine is just my actual name written in Japanese （レックス）
I like it, cause it appears so different from my actual name (Lex), yet they are the same

My original nick was AquaScorpio based on the birth signs of my first wife and me. When I got divorced and started seeing my next wife, it seemed prudent to pick another moniker. The marine came from my time in the Marine Corps while the Nuke came from my application to the nuclear program when I was transferring into the Navy. Ironically, I got turned down for the nuclear program due to my, umm, antics in the Marine Corp but I still kept the moniker.

brandon7s Wrote:It's a variation on an abbreviation of my full name, which is Brandon Timothy Smith. About 2,510,000 results if you google that, so I'm not exactly worried about privacy.

Perhaps not so private?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22Brandon+Timothy+...arolina%22

http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/1941

Nukemarine was already taken.

My favorite book series in 7th grade,His Dark Materials, had a character named Lord Asriel. (then later when and made a mediocre movie about it)

I thought he was pretty badass, and reminded me a lot of General Baal from Grandia. Unfortunately, the movie definitely missed my image of their characters.
Cool vs Not Cool:

Mine is pretty complex. It is my first name... and the first letter of my last name.

Top THAT!

My name comes from the word for infinity, because I am infinitely awesome. Try to top that! Impossible わ！

@sethg:

Well, mine is a combination of letters from my first, middle, and last name, so nyah. The fact that I said that probably makes me ripe for identity theft now. Ah well.

Actually the only reason that nickname exists is because a long time ago I was trying to sign up for MapleStory (friends wanted me to, I swear!) and it's all I could think of. I used to use another one that was kinda similar but heck if I remember what it was.

走りや　get it?

My circle of friends dated only white girls but I dated and married an Asian. Thus, they dubbed me.

My name and surname's initials.

I stole it from Bob Cock.

Why is cock not censored and leprechaun (a.s.s.h.o.l.e.) is?

Smackle Wrote:Why is cock not censored and leprechaun (a.s.s.h.o.l.e.) is?

Why would the word for a male bird need censoring?

ToasterMage Wrote:>This was the german vesion of the book, so the original one might was written differently
the same except a 'sh' and not 'sch'.

Hehe, thanks, I've just found a wikipedia article about me and my species...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlord_%28alien_race%29

Direct quote from the article (I've read it just now for the first time in my life):

"Rashaverak is first thought to be a low level Overlord but he is actually an assistant to Karellen and an expert for psychology. His first appearance in the book is at a party hosted by Rupert Boyce reading a book in Rupert's library. Rupert Boyce has a private interest in parapsychology and has collected an impressive library on the subject, which draws the Overlords' attention. Rashaverak—or "Rashy" as he is called by Rupert—is shown to gain a large amount of knowledge in a short time through reading, virtually flicking pages every second."

And people were rambling about why I wanted / want to master speed reading, about what I've aleready opened a thread a few months ago I've got so little time and so much to read!!