How did you come up with your pen name?

[bear1]

I wanted to use my real name...but also stay kinda anonymous. So I used the short version of my full name, which is 'Bea' and the first letter of my last name, which is 'R'.
Turned out that it spelled 'bear', which I found really cute so I settled on it as my pen name

[gh0stcr33p]

thought it sounded cool.

[Kotopopi]

Kotopopi is my dog's nickname and it's a totally made up word! It's just how his cuteness sounded in my brain.
As I've started to do a super deformed kind of comics I needed a cute name so... voilà!

[Zaboem]

Once when I was in a college library, I noticed that some if my favorite authors (Timothy Zahn and William Zinser) were particularly easy to find in the book shelves. Not many books were on the Z shelf in the fiction section, and that shelf itself was easy to find at the far left side. I realized that this option was a system exploiting trick, like how folks used to name their businesses AAA This or That in order to be listed first in the old phone books. I immediately went to that huge dictionary in every large library's reference section and turned to the Z words. One if the first new words I found was the name of a biblical town which I had never read before. I have been Scott Zaboem ever since that moment.

[joe_galindez]

Similarly, I found that "Common First Name" + "Unusual Last Name" is common among sci-fi and fantasy writers. It's like the first name offers a bit of familiarity while the last name promises some interesting strangeness.

[NoSuperman10]

I used to watch a LOT of Scrubs...

[Shmorca]

I really like the game Wadanohara and the Deep Blue Sea, and I had an inside joke about the orca man Idate from it. We created a 'discount' and knockoff version of the game called Shmadanohara, and Shmidate was a knockoff version. He's a Shmorca.

That's it lmao

[theladiesi]

Back in high school people would refer to my sister and me as "The ladies I" because they couldn't tell us apart (we are identical twins) and they couldn't pronounce our last name. My psychology teacher started the nickname and it stuck. Been using it on a lot of social media. I think it's cute and it's been a part of our identity for a long time now.

[Divine-Angel]

Divine-Angel, comes from my user name on DA. (DivineAnglicMelody[I know I spelt angelic wrong lol])
I created that user name when I was like.. 12? and really liked it now, so I ended up reconstructing that and now all my readers call me Divine. lol.

[panda3291]

I go by Pan, Panda, etc. irl and for obvious reasons, it's taken as a name on many sites. I always collect panda BEAR stuff, too, and I ran into The Oatmeal's comic about a bear and a pterodactyl mix and ended up with Pandactyle. It has Panda in it, and it gives it a cool nickname without adding 458732984572 numbers at the end.

[VibrantFox]

I've gone through about 3 different monikers but my current (and probably permanent) pen name VibrantFox kinda came at random since I needed a quick and simple name when I started. I really like bright and colorful things so that's how I settled on Vibrant and Fox because they're my one of my favorite animals. I've also had friends make the connection that I tend to have a bright personality and I can be a bit fox-like(?), though somewhere between cat and dog may have been more accurate which wound up leading to fox

[ghostmaya]

mine is ghostmaya, since I can;t think of any pen name I use my OC name Maya the Ghost.

[JediM]

My name's Jed IRL. So you can guess the nickname for me in most circles.

[ChristodeBoyet]

Christo is a shortened version of my first name, while de Boyet is an old french spelling of my last name.

[erma]

My real name is Emma and in high school my friends would be like "HEY ERRRRRMAAA" as a joke, and now it's my pen name. As well as my display name in Splatoon.

[nikaalexandra]

it's my real first and middle name because i am ~super original~

[hades]

mine started as a joke.
I was on an avatar forum and someone claimed I was satan.
I said no and started going as Hades instead.
it's.....been....7 years now.

[IdiotWithPencil]

cause I'm usually and idiot in real life and I have a lot of pencils

[CalixLucas]

Calix Ai (Calix for short) is an anagram of my birth name but with an X added to it and Lucas is just a name I love.

[Rochrok]

Rochelle is my middle name and I thought Ragnarok would be cool, like R&R or something. Not very original but yeah. lol! Rochrok is basically both names smashed together.