Usernames and MU names

Hella

This is a two-parter, inspired by my curiosity.

First part is, how did you come up with your username? What's the story behind it? I guess, what's your origin story?

Second question, I've noticed a lot of us repeat character names. Do you? How did you choose it? How do you choose character names, in general? What inspires you?

I think most people know my username used to be vulgarkitten (I've heard some people think that's supposed to be a secret - it's not). I got it from an ex boyfriend IRL when I was trying to come up with something funny. He told me I should just pick two things I liked and smash them together. Thus, swearing and cats.

I changed my username to Hella to reflect moving away from that place in my life and back to what felt better to me. Hella is a spin on my minecraft username and what all my SMP friends call me, and have called me for 10+ years. For me, it's just a happier, better fit.

As for MU character names, I think the one I'm most (in)famous for is Catriona. I used it for years and years on Road to Amber, and then again on The Reach after the previous player gave it up. I chose it because I think it's a pretty name, simple as that. Also, I love that it shortens to 'Cat'. I'm a big fan of names that have convenient short forms (see: Monique 'Mo'). I think, though, that Catriona was the only name I ever reused a bunch across multiple MUs. The others have just been names that I thought were pretty and inspired me to build characters around them.

That's my story. What's yours?

Macha

@Hella Uhh well, Macha actually comes from mythology, and I am a mythology nerd. It's also part of my gamer tag, etc. There are people in the "Real World" that only know me as Macha.

As for repeating names.. I played very different characters and one had a shorter version of the first one's name? (Sabrielle -> Brielle) but I was actually intending Brielle to have been her mother's weird take on Gabrielle.

But I don't tend to repeat names, I guess, unless it's the same character being ported from like a closed game to another game of a similar kind. (Comic, etc)

Derp

I think I've told this one before, but I tried at least three names in my original attempt, and all of them were registered as taken. So out of frustration I just typed Derp into the box and, lo and behold, that one took.

reimesu

Mine is my char from the old WoD IRC channel. I seem to recall that it had something to do with a fire goddess but it was a take on a fire goddess's name and it's been so long that I can't remember the mythology it came from.

I do tend to recycle old MU names, but it has to do with how hard I connected with the char in the first place and the wish to give them extra life.

Ghost

Mine (Ghost) is due to the tongue-in-cheek running joke that I can be whoever I want in the hobby or the forums at any given time and...

my belief that constant monitoring and tracking of individuals in the hobby has impeded innocent people more than the "bad people"
an attempted constant reminder that almost everyone in the hobby presents who they want to say they are but are likely, truly (on perhaps some insecure level) not that person (everyone presents an idealized version of self to strangers)
that the shocking twist of this community is that there are a lot of "people playing characters who play characters" and I, myself, could literally be a convicted 4x felon and the only way anyone would know it is if I gave them actual personally identifying information to reveal that to them.

Not trying to provoke, but this is literally why I go as Ghost here. On an internet anonymous text-based, non-video/voice hobby...we are whoever the fuck we tell you we are until figured out otherwise.

-edit:
I actually just recently got a discord ping from a MUer I hadn't talked to in maybe 3 years. I don't even remember truly who they were but I could read our chat history in back-scroll about MU. They tried to get me to download a piece of software that was clearly malicious, and I thought:

Did they get hacked?
Is it the same person, but they're trying to scam me?
Did they (as an actual MUer) send me a link to a website or game hoping to determine my IP to try to lock me out of some MU or prove I wasn't on some game?

I realized from what I've seen over the years, all 3 were realistic possibilities so I reported the person and blocked them. So feel free to use "Ghost" as much as you want or whatever, there really are no guarantees

(Also: I don't think I ever repeated charnames so can't answer 2nd)

Misadventure

Mine is unpleasent.

When whatever version of WORA came up that I joined, a woman had just been mauled to death by two dogs whose owners didnt like her life.

I found it biiterly funny that they were charged with ...
"Keeping mischievous dogs"

So I was going to be "Mischievous dogs" as a reminder of how shitty people can be, and how most of life just goes on. Apprpriate when dealing with some parts of the MU* community.

I happened across the term "death by misadventure" and it:

seemed nicer
acknowledged that I expected to get rolled by participating (and I was not disappointed)
a family name is Chance which is sort usualy part of misadventure

And for a while there was the moment when people were gendering up their user names, and Miss Adventure was right there.

Ganymede

I was reading a lot of Shakespeare at the time, while also studying gender identity back in the late 90s.

For PCs, I like to pick mundane names, none of which would seem unusual. I have a fondness for names with Goidelic roots.

faraday

I had just done a college essay on Michael Faraday, and he was a pretty cool scientist/engineer. Seemed fitting for my first staff coder bit.

For PCs, I tend to just use names that I like, since I'm going to have to constantly be typing and seeing them. Occasionally I'll come up with a unique one special to a setting/etc. (on The 100, for instance, they used variants of local place names/signs), but mostly I just rotate ones from my 'stable' of names.