You Got Some 'Splainin To Do! or, What does your username mean?
Rob
United States
30° 12′ 38″ N, 95° 45′ 2″ W
Never give credit to conspiracy what can be much better explained as just rampant incompetence.
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I see hundreds of usernames every day on this site, and sometimes I wonder: does that name have some secret meaning? If it does (and you want to reveal it), this is the place to do it.
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Rob Leveille
Canada
St. Catharines
Ontario
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I was signing up for Yahoo years ago and had decided I didn't want to use my old standby username any more. My nicknames from from wouldn't work (i don't think #$@%face and &*%$head would be appropriate) and every literary reference I tried came up short.
I had winamp playing in the background, and while I wasn't a huge jazz fan I had Thelonious Monk in the queue. I thought, hey this is cool. Rebellious outside-of-the-box musician with a cool name - I can steal that!
Turned out I couldn't. Somebody already had. So, in a brief moment of inspiration it came to me. i signed myself up as phelonius_punk. It kind of summed up my youthful years and borrowed a jazz musicians cool at the same time.
Over the years, i dropped the 'punk' (after 30, it seemed a vane conceit). I'm pretty happy with the name, and have happened to grow to appreciate the music.
great list, BTW
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Amy Jordan
United States
Durham
North Carolina
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A lot of people think my username is sexual, but it's not.
A couple years ago an ex-boyfriend of mine introduced me to BrettspielWelt. At that time I was using a boring username based on my real name (Amy). Introducing me to BSW turned out to be the only good thing he ever did for me. He wasn't a nice guy. However, I wanted to keep playing on BSW so I just changed my username.
I chose "illicit" because I was hiding, kind of like an outlaw... and it was also making fun of myself. One of the definitons of "illicit" is: improperly formed; ungrammatical. I am a bit of a stickler for spelling and grammar, to the point of being annoying.
I guess my username story isn't nearly as exciting as some people hope. 
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Bill Albanito
United States
Marshfield
Wisconsin
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My username has a bit of history.
When I was in 7th grade or so, I started playing this new game called Dungeons and Dragons. I rolled a Magic-User and named him Rom Alexis (don't know where that came from...) My best friend and I would play every weekend. It was just him and his crazy, creative mind (Ray...if you're out there, contact me!!! It's been too long!) and my little mage.
Well, one of his adventures took me to the 20th century. I knew Rom or Rom Alexis would never do, so I switched to Alex Roman while I was in that time period.
Years later, Roman was still a part of me. I use "Roman" on nearly every message board or free email address I signed up for. But "Roman" on its own was usually taken, so I added my year of birth, 1967 - hence "Roman1967"
My first son is Alexandre Roman Albanito...just so you know how far I took it. 
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Jason Merriman
United States
Albany
New York
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A friend of mine used to refer to a person who thought a little too highly of themselves, or the apparent alpha male amongst a group of rivals as Big Jim One. I have no clue where he got that from, but I guess thats good, since he would address said alpha male as Big Jim One to his face. If it weren't some kind of way inside joke, we would have gotten into a lot more barfights than completely necessary.
Anyway...my nickname is Head since my oh-so-sensitive friends allege that I have a large noggin. Once upon a time, I needed a handle for a FPS (maybe Unreal Tournament circa 2000?), and Head was a little too generic. So, my inflated ego combined my nickname and a term that stood for 'Hey, I'm the bull's ****, you really want a piece of me??? Huh?!!?'.
Oh, and I'm desperately saving for an avatar, so random donations for no good reason are adored. And read my movie reviews at my fledgling site incrediblyshallow.com.
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John Lopez
United States
Tucson
Arizona
Get off my lawn!
The explanation: Impossible Triangle + TW (my company initials) = my logo.
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Godeke is a mangled version of Goedecke or Gödéke (I think that's the correct accent). The nick was based on a character is some short Sci-Fi stories I wrote for my creating writing class back in high school. They were based on a character (who's first name is now lost along with the original stories) who was one of the first to travel near the speed of light on an exploration/colonization mission. When he reaches his destination, he is surprised to find humans have made it there first: faster than light travel was invented during his flight.
However, technological improvement didn't change the nature of man and he found that he had dropped into yet another war zone in the endless war zones that man seems apt to create. Disgusted by this (during the long trip the crew had adopted a Utopian plan for the colony they were hoping to establish if the system was habitable) his crew decided to continue to use their near light speed craft to "jump" forward through time in the hopes that humans will eventually learn some sense as a collective, and the stories are each of the encounters they have with humanity in the ever more distant future.
There was a question as to why people use nicknames online. I rarely use my given name online because.
a) Handles were just part of the culture back when "online" meant a bunch of BBSes and "Unix to Unix copy" servers and it was accessed at 300 BAUD.
b) As a punk 14 year old, I was a gray hat hacker. I didn't mean to cause harm, but sometimes "learning" involved things that were stupid and dangerous. Growing up is a good thing. So is the clearing of record at eighteen if you actually changed your perspective.
c) As a personal consultant and also part owner of a business that deals with multinationals, I prefer to keep my recreational pursuits apart from my professional. In my industry, people Google names pretty hard to get an edge and explaining my game collections (board, RPG and console) or strange online rantings could be career limiting.
d) Having had a few BGG users take umbrage with my ratings and go far enough to find my direct e-mail accounts for my pseudonym to use in direct assaults on me, I really don't see the need to expose my given name and associated accounts to make such things harder to shut down.
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DORGON
United States
Round Rock
Texas
Entertainment for those who don't think young & don't think old
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*YAWN*...Ok It's just my Name Michael W. Chapel. So dull I know. There are only 2500 Chapel's in the US, quite uncommon name which I find odd. There are only two references to Chapel in movies/tv:
Nurse Chapel from Star Trek and Billy Chapel(Kevin Costner) from "For Love of the Game"...
Ok, so not very much to work with... 
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Gregg Lewis
United States
Abilene
Texas
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okay...you asked for it.
way back in lets say....before 1995, my friends and I would waste lots of money playing LAN Battletech at a place called virtual world...occasionally you might see one of these setups at a place like Gameworks or Dave & Buster's. When you became a 'member,' you chose a handle; I chose 'Paladin.' They had this house rule that if you duplicated anyone's handle and you were there on the same day, you got a free one-on-one battle for the use of the name, the victor getting to choose the loser's new handle (there were alot of handles like 'Prissypants' and so forth). Well I found out that Paladin was the manager's handle (D'oh!). Needless to say he whipped me handedly, but being the chivalrous type (hence the nickname) he allowed me to choose my new handle. I chose Aquila, because I was in JuCo at the time, taking astrology and the name of the constellation was on my mind.
Aquila worked really well for a long, long time as a webID, as it was unique enough to not have to be aquila78904 or something, but that didn't last, so I added 'Prime' to signify 'the original' and to pay homage to my other addiction (other than games), Transformers.
weird Aquila facts:
Aquila means 'Eagle'
Aquila the constellstion represents a cellestial Eagle that obeys the gods. This cellestial eagle was used by Zeus to transport Ganymede (the water-bearer depicted in Aquarius) to the heavens-the only mortal allowed to ascend to the realm of the gods. In some translations, Zeus uses the cellestial eagle to smite people, instead of lightning.
pretty cool, right?
yeah, I thought you'd feel that way
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Mika Luoma-aho
Finland
Rovaniemi
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RJay is short of reindeer jerky. I hang out to dry in my backyard raw reindeer meat every March-April, and have thin slices of it (with beer) for the rest of the year.
Delicious. Nothing quite like it. Jerky-zen.
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Not too hard to figure out this one. Whenever I'm trying to introduce a friend to a new game (one that I've played several times before) I try to take it easy on them and allow them to win, without making it obvious that I'm taking a fall. But sometimes no matter how I try NOT to win I just can't help it. I've been accused of being a sore winner because I apparently get a smug smile on my face that annoyed my ex-wife to no end.
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Jennifer Stone
United States
Auburn
Washington
To all my geekfriends, I know I haven't been around much lately, but BGG is still my homepage and everyone is still in my heart everyday. Just so damn busy!
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I've never had any unusual nicknames save for Jen or Jenny, and I only let certain people use those (GROGnads gets to call me Jen). In high school I got the typical "Jennifart." Fast forward to a very normal and sometimes ho-hum life of stay at home mom and homeschooling family, and then I found Wizardry 8, a PC game that I liked immensely. I mean, like stay up all night immensely. I still like to play PC games, and there are tons out there better than Wizardry 8, but it was my first love of PC games and it was something out of the norm for me to do at the time. So I became wiz8mom, and I'm just so used to it that nothing else seems right. Plus, it's not too bad when people call me "wiz." Makes me sound smart.
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Eric Buhr
Canada
Gladstone
Manitoba
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Well as a result of much time spent on a Lord of the Rings website, I discovered a means to translate my name into Quenya Elvish (I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan, in case you couldn't tell). "Eric" is a name meaning "mighty one" or some such, which translates as "Vorocano." And, that being fairly unique, has become my handle on any forums I sign on to. So now you know.
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Kenneth Bailey
United States
Ypsilanti
Michigan
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My username is the Mi part of MiG. It is named after Artem Mikoyan, the guy who ran the MiG design bureau for Soviet Aircraft. Back in the day, I used to hang out on IRC and I was looking for an aviation related nickname. All of the common ones were taken, so I went for one a little more obscure.
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Darlene Lopez
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Well, I suppose my BGG username is rather self-explanatory. I used to just lurk on BGG until attending the first BGG.CON last year with my husband. I decided that if I was going to participate I should probably get myself an account. My default handle was unavailable so I fell back onto the old standard blank_of_blank naming standard.
And if I ever get enough geek gold to put up an avatar, I'm going to have to put up the cadet training manual picture (at least for a while). It was the first game my husband (then my fiance) tried to teach me. I was fine until energy allocation tables. It was too much and I quit. Ever since he's had the pleasure of being able to say that his wife is a "Space Cadet".
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Scott Woodard
United States
Portland
Oregon
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Waaaaay back in the early 90s, I used to spend many a night chatting online via IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Often I found myself participating in modern pagan chat rooms and I was regularly praised for my writing skills and eloquence. One evening, one of the regulars suggested I call myself "Ogma" after the Celtic God of eloquence, literature and education. I went with it and ever since, regardless of where I post, my screenname is "Ogma" (or an adjusted variant (in case someone else has already claimed it).
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tony brotherton
United Kingdom
orpington
kent
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Mine's inspired by Abdul Alhazared, author of the Necronomicon.
One of my favourite artists is H.R.Giger who also published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-R-Gigers-Necronomicon-H-Giger/dp/0962344729">a book of the same name</a>. It's a pretty unique name and is usually free on sites for logins.
The down side, post 9/11 I've been abused a few times on chat rooms and message boards by rednecks (and chavs).
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Alexander Zhang
United States
West Haven
Connecticut
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From J.R.R. Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, Chrysophylax Dives is the dragon villain - not a completely evil creature, but not a pansy either. Chrysophylax is Greek, meaning something along the lines of "Gold Guardian" or "Goldward."
Huh.. never counted before, but I've been using this name online for a good twenty years now.
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Todd N.
United States
Medford
Oregon
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I am a big Friedemann Friese nut, so I picked the Furunkulus name due to the character showing up in a lot of his games in some form. I thought it sounded cool also.
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Mike Hart
Scotland
Oban
Argyll
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For my username I named myself after Gaspode The Wonderdog, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books
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Claus
Denmark
Sorø
Blandt alle de onde,...
... den gode vil gå til grunde!
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I am a newbee, and I always will be a newbee That goes for You as well We are all n00bs! So there.....
....oh, and it rhymes on b( Y )bs...
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Lawrence
Kansas
Games and Usernames
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/3698
Leeds
West Yorkshire
troy
MI
Arizona
California
Mine's a reference to Citizen Kane. Citizen Cain was already taken, at another site, and my mind was so tired, I came up with Rosebud as the alternative. Something mighty manly about a guy named Rosebud.