What is the history behind your username?

[smokesalty]

Yeah, just tell me why you chose your username!

I've had people ask me for the reason behind mine, and god. It's stupid but I'm explaining it.

I used to put an excessive amount of salt on everything in middle school to where it became an inside joke-- in eighth grade all my friends bought me salt for my birthday. I was just walking around school with jars of salt in my bag and one bag of sugar (my friend wanted to be quirky I guess?)I changed usernames quite a bit, and I decided to go for the joke that I "smoked salt." (I expected to change it at some point)

I was planning on finding a new username before I released my comic, since I thought having "by smokesalty" would sound stupid on a horror comic but nah. "Smoke" as a nickname fits the horror vibe quite well. It's a stupid username I've just stuck with for whatever reason.

[BlairFujin]

Around late primary school, I think... (around age 11/12) I decided I don't want to keep on using some variation of my first name as my username and as the not very creative person when it comes to naming I've always been who's found out not so long ago that the cartoons I liked are calles "anime" I called myself pretty much just anime fan, but since just "fan" in Polish is a male form, I went with "fanka' which is female fan in Polish
And... well, I've never came up with anything better 'xD (though I'd like to go for maybe something more gender neutral now... but if I were to go for something in Polish again, then I'm screwed, yay for needlesly gendered language...) and at this point I've got too many accounts with this name for rebranding not becoming a giant pain in the ass ;p

[darthmongoose]

Oh god. It's embarrassing.

Okay, so back when I was in my teens at the turn of the millennium (god that makes me sound so old), I kind of lagged behind my friends getting in on this whole "internet" thing, there just wasn't an awful lot to do online. I'd grudgingly made an email address when I was about fourteen with the hilariously cringe username "Koolestevakate", but I didn't really have a typical online handle yet.

So when I started hanging out at a friend's place regularly to play LAN games of things like Baldur's Gate, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires etc. He was like "okay what should we call you?" and when I said I had no idea, he said "Alright then, you're... Mongoose Eater."
This was eventually shortened to just "Mongoose", a name that honestly sort of suits me; small, ginger and ready to take on anyone even if it's not the best decision, rather like how Mongooses are known to fight snakes.

So when I was in Sixth Form (the final two years of High School in the UK when the college is attached to a school, Sixth formers get things like free periods and sometimes perks like not having to wear a uniform, when I went, these two years were optional, but they're now compulsory), I started spending time on the internet in the computer lab or library at school, and discovered something I liked online! The official Star Wars website caption competition, where people sent in funny captions for random on-set or behind the scenes Star Wars photos. To take part, all I needed was a username...
And this was how I learned that on popular sites, you need to get creative with usernames. I was really struggling to get a name that wasn't taken. Then I thought.... Well, maybe I'll use Mongoose! But wait... aha! What if... STAR WARS MONGOOSE!

And so teenage Kate discovered that Darth Mongoose was pretty much always available as a username because nobody else thought to call themselves something that ridiculous, and it was my go-to username for years because it kind of stuck. For a pretty long time, even on the UK comics scene where people knew me in person I was "Darth".

[Nada]

My first language is Spanish, Amenity (Amenidad) is synonymous with kindness, I guess that's why I chose it, before I had thought of Alondra, a very rare woman's name in Spanish, but in the end, I chose the first because it seemed to me that it went a little more with what I try to reflect as a person.

[DualDragons]

I smashed my regular and chinese zodiac together. Gemini and Dragon

[Bearkorps]

So I guess I have two stories here.
Bearkorps: My parents have a weird fascination with naming myself and my siblings nicknames that start with 'B'. I got the nickname Bear. Supposedly, as a toddler I walked around with my arms outstretched in a circular fashion (like a bear I suppose) and I had a back for finding wherever my mom kept her honey and would eat it straight with my hands if needed. My family - especially in my dad's side have had a (recent) history with the military which lead myself and my older brother to Warhammer 40k where I would play mostly imperial guard cuz of my fascination with the deathkorps of krieg.
Woof!The Any Animal Except a Dog: I had an interest in starting a YouTube channel similar to Legal Eagle but for science issues to kinda use my PhD education to a more practical use. I am pretty camera shy so when thinking about an avatar I happened upon the idea (gonna tell it like I just found it lying in the woods) of a well dressed aardvark that barked. I ended up switching to a bee for character count purposes

[NickRowler]

I came up with an OC which I named Nick B Rowler. He was very mysterious and no one knew what he looked like but he would write these books about killing immortals.

When I was younger, I would randomly mention the name as an inside joke. I remember for a time I had the phase “I am not Nick B Rowler” as my deviantArt tagline. And I have old art and comics from my teen years where characters are reading his books or mentioning him in passing.

I then learned that it was a username most people do not use. I ended up dropping the B because nickbrowler looks like Browler. Sometimes, I go simply as Rowler.

Now that I use the name as a username/penman, I retired the OC. The character was never meant to be a self insert and I am worried it would cause confusion.

[Mar_Sadeh]

I was starting to get a bit tired of my old username, which I won't post here. I still use it from time to time, but for a few reasons (basically, people kept shortening it to something I really didn't like, and apparently it read as feminine and people kept automatically assuming I was a woman despite the fact that I am a man by just about any definition ranging from personal identity to birth assignment to having a beard) I wanted to move on. I remember sitting in a Discord room desperately trying to think up new usernames - people were giving suggestions but they all felt wrong.

In the end, I went with something I'd been studying extensively of late (and still study to this day) - Kabbalah. I changed my username there to "Da'at", which means "knowledge". That felt right to me.

So now using different sefirot (of which Da'at is one* and Chochmah is another) has become my go-to on various sites. It lets me keep distinctive and interesting usernames that are meaningful to me while also keeping them separate if I feel a need to do so - in an emergency, since they are real words and concepts that I did not make up, I have plausible deniability that "No, that isn't me, it's just someone else who also studied Kabbalah I guess" (and I can confirm that other people do use sefirot as usernames sometimes, I have had to try two usernames before with this technique). On a related note, my avatar is also the sefirot (Chochmah is the top left circle).

*Sorta. Not everyone agrees that Da'at counts... but that's another discussion.

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

I have a bunch of them all over the internet, which tends to confuse people who are trying to figure out if they've got the same person from one platform to another.

Scarlet Cryptid: (Tapas, Instagram) This one came about because my favorite color is red, and back in high school I had a character named Scarlet. On top of that, I'm one of those people who accidentally sneaks up on everyone, and can disappear into the background in an instant, and I have vague goals of lurking in the woods like a cryptid someday and maybe inspiring my own local legend. It also seemed like an interesting, somewhat approachable 'art name', since my actual given name is so common that trying to find ANY variant of it to use as a username on most platforms is just... not happening.

Toxinfox: (Discord, Tumblr) This one's pretty simple-- I like foxes and I have an armchair fascination for poison. Plus the alliteration of the name is pleasant, and it shortens nicely to 'Tox' or 'Toxin'.

Pointy-Eared-Fiend: (Deviantart) ....Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of characters with pointy ears. Plus a lot of other usernames I tried were taken.

KhaosDaughter: (Various chat messengers and forums) I have a superhero character who goes by the alias of Nyx (Which, given her powers, makes zero sense, but I can't change it now...), but if you've ever tried to get any variation of Nyx on any platform, they are allllllll taken. But in Greek myth, Nyx was the daughter of Khaos, so... Khaos Daughter. Plus it just kind of sounds cool, and is virtually never taken.

[Lady_T_Musings]

That's a cute and funny story XD! Smoke is legit.

I chose the Lady as I thought this would be the easiest way to let folks know how I identify ( jury is out based on how many questions about my sex I've gotten over the years) and back in college I had a friend who was obsessed with fantasy and titles and Ya girl got a kick out of being called Lady over mam or Ms so I was right alongside her.

So this friend would greet me as My Lady Toyano and it always tickled my heart. The T from my username is shortened from the nickname above she fashioned from my usual nickname Toya. I still use Lady Toyano for gaming, but for my art stuff, I wanted to keep it short n sweet.

The musings came from trying to find something that encompassed me better than my old name which made my emails address epically long. One that muses about shiz sums me up poetically enough so I threw it all together and we got Lady T. Musings

[EncryptedWriting]

Sooo not necessarily this username, but this was too good not to share. It is something I thought I would take to my grave, but it is whatever.

Back when I was eight, I had an iPad. My dad had to approve and download all the games we had (i.e. angry birds, jetpack joyride, temple run, etc.). However, I wanted to dive into a TCG game that was actively interacting with other players. My dad downloaded it for me, but he told me not to give any information about myself outwards.

Welp, I didn't.

Little me had to think of a username, and to my right was an arts and crafts station in our play room. I saw glue sticks. And, then the words of my dad echoed in my ear about not sharing personal data, so I decided on the number twelve. Lo and behold, the legend of Gluesticks12 was born.

[BoomerZ]

Name I used in a couple MMOs based on my favorite character from Battlestar Galactica.

[Shady_Kuronachi]

My Hero is one of my favorite animes, and I immediately could relate to Tokoyami Fumigage. Dark Shadow was iconic, and his whole story was just... chef's kiss. Kuronachi is Japanese, and the kanji is read as "Black Blood", which is associated with a lot of things about me. I plan on passing my alias on to someone else when the time comes, so I needed some thing gender neutral. That is also the reason my avatar looks androgynous. Plus I felt that having "2cool4anyone14" (which is also my email) as my username for the rest of my life was embarrassing. Therfore, Shady Kuronachi was born.

[sourswords]

I got tired of my old username (which was before I joined Tapas, but I used a variant of it on most of my socials), which was based on a throwaway line from Scott Pilgrim (the comic, not the movie). Last August, I got serious about trying to come up with something new, mashing together words/concepts that I liked, and I basically was like "I like sour candy. I like swords. Bada bing, bada boom." It sounds less stupid than the old one, and that's what matters.

[wispysing]

A little embarrassing but...name generator. It did grow on me in the end, and I'm really liking Wisp as a nickname.

[Llyrel]

I picked "Llyrel" as my nickname when I decided to separate my gaming activity from my art stuff. I originally put came up with the name for RPG purposes, but the character I created never got much use, sooo... I decided to recycle the name for myself XD

I liked it because it was 100% "original" (as in, invented by me with no references to songs or whatever as I usually tend to do) + it was shorter and easier to pronounce compared to what I had before. Well... somewhat easier to pronounce XD it didn't occur to me until recently that most people are probably going to read it as "LIE-rel" when in my head it actually sounds like "Lee-rEl" with a stress on the E, but whatever

[BLTX]

My full name is 'Brandon Tenn Luke.' I flipped my T and L initials to spell BLT, just because as someone who's a notoriously big eater among his family, I found it kind of amusing. And then just added an X at the end because it sounded cool. Coincidentally, X is also the roman numeral for 10. And that's the history behind my nickname.

[Phantomobservant]

I have liked ghosts since I was 13, and obsessed with ghost hunting stories also I saw I never talked often and would more than likely watch things so you get an observant phantom.

[powerplantanimations]

My friends and I were going to make a CGI short series called "Power Plant".

It was about a dystopian corporation called "Power Plant" mutating plants and turning them into slaves. The plant in profile has a name (Roses :v). That was his blender model.

We changed the logo to match up with That Stick Figure Isekai's aesthetic:

I'm thinking about changing my profile to "That Mexican Stick Figure" since I'm falling in love with how Burd drew me in our Q&A:

Also to tie the branding together since everything is stick figures (I plan on making That Mexican Stick Figure my YouTube avatar as well :v) (a bit of an inside joke too since my friends expected me to have a thick accent but when they heard me for the first time they were blown away by how white I sounded).

Also going that direction since my parents are really in touch with their culture.

[TheLemmaLlama]

My current username doesn't have a long history, so Imma recount the legends of my entire username history instead

So during early days, I went by ctang15, because it was my student ID or school email or something. Simple enough.

But of course that was boring, so I wanted to change it. Being a frequent reader of TvTropes at the time, I stumbled upon the trope A.I. Is A Crapshoot, and my first thought was "heh heh, 'crap'" (I was very mature) and my second thought was "what the heck does 'crapshoot' mean anyways"? So I looked it up:

Being a quiet autistic kid who didn't get into much trouble, people would say I was organized and obedient and liked routine, and I HAAAAAATED this reputation. I was too shy to rebel against it openly, but in my head (and on the internet), I was like 'no, I'm CHAOTIC and RANDUM' and so I started going by crapsh0ot (with a zero because 'crapshoot' was taken :P)

Then later, I got into math and wanted to start a math channel, which I named TheLemmaLlama (a 'lemma' is basically an oddly specific theorem that has no interest or use beyond proving a more interesting theorem, and it sounds kind of like 'llama') I'm no longer interesting in being a math youtuber, but I still think the handle is neat, so I've decided to keep it