Yeah, sadly for me this is so common that I’m genuinely delighted when a streamer gets my name right on the first try lol… to me the double d made it obvious that it was hidden not hidin’ but apparently I was mistaken by popular vote 
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True story. I was sitting next to a guy who was reading the newspaper during a coffee break. He was reading an article in the lifestyle section about a woman and two men who lived together in a polyamorous relationship. The article had a quote in it from the woman that talked about the three of them sharing the same bed, and had the line “It’s like they’re two heat seaking missiles, and I’m the heat.” My coworker, after reading this part aloud, turned to me and said, “I think I’m going to start calling you ‘the heat’ from now on.” It was random, it got some laughs, a few other people thought it was an awesome suggestion and for a period of time people literally did refer to me as “the heat” or simply “heat”. Most of those people I no longer work with, but there are one or two I still see from time to time that still remember the completely random origins of my nickname.
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Same ^___^
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My usual internet nickname is something else, and of course I started with that here.
However, upon becoming a moderator, and subject to genuinely scary threats from trolls, I felt the need to distance myself at least a little from the rest of my internet presence.
I was scratching my head for a suitable name for a moderator, and really out of no-where “Eugene” as in “Careful with that axe, Eugene”, lept into my head.
So far, I think only two people I have encountered here “got it” and told me so, but that’s OK 
Sometimes a rare pleasure is good one.
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I chose “KAOS” in October 2004 when I created an account for an MMORPG, which I then played over the course of several years. The name was nice, short and simple, genderneutral (in German, it is “das Chaos”), and it somehow fit me - whenever I have a bad day, I feel there’s only chaos in my head. Also, it’s not a unique name, which means I couldn’t be googled.
I spent much time chatting on IRC back then, and depending on the situation, I changed my name to KAOS^currentmood, and most of the time I used KAOS^konfused. And then, whenever I wanted to sign up as KAOS somewhere else, but KAOS was already taken, I signed up as KAOSkonfused or KAOS.konfused.
Now I’ve been using the name KAOS for so long that you could call me KAOS IRL and I would react as if it was my real name. 
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As for me, I’ve been researching on humanist literature at that time and quite a good deal of humanists around the 16th century either latinised their personal name or gave themselves a name based on their homeland or a geographical feature thereof. I liked that idea: it’s not as goofy as other names I use on the web and it’s not hard for others to read or pronounce or declinate. Maybe it sounds a bit aloof, but who cares.
Now, the town I was born and raised in lies on a river that goes by the latin name of Sanona. So “Sanonius” is the guy from the Sanona river, Saane in German and Sarine in French.
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On a not unrelated note, here is the story behind my profile picture 
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Well, mine comes from a D&D Bard that I made to play for a short campaign and I liked the name and in the one time I got to play that bard he was so horrible at doing anything that I felt that he should be remembered … so I have been using it for almost 2 decades
No, seriously, it was back in 3rd edition and I had taken improved critical on a keen scimitar (MunchKING!) . That means that all I had to do to roll a critical was to roll more than 12 on a d20 dice. In the full span of that playthrough, in more than 50 rolls that happened only once (which is a statistical impossibility if you calculate it, but it happened) and even though the crit was confirmed, the monster was a displacer beast and by now I certain you all know what happened next: of course I rolled 49 on the 50/50 percent chance of hitting the displacer beast or its fake after image and missed.
So one critical hit in more than 50 tries of 12/20 odds and even that eventually missed and failed ? Lovely … so, I keep that nickname as the epitome of how even when the odds are in your favour, things can be total epic fails.
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Back in elementary school I had a friend living in another city, and we used a ‘secret language’ to send each other letters (written with a dip pen and ink, because that was way cooler than ballpoint pens). The secret language is essentially a pretty common cipher with a personal twist, with the personal twist being that the words should be pronouncable, although that goal has only partly been reached. In this cipher, my real name translates to Vsotvep.
My profile picture has the character 鳥, which means bird. In Japanese it is pronounced トリ (tori). Many of the friends I made in Japan, including my girlfriend, call me Tori, so I’ve started to get quite fond of it. Also, 鳥 is a fun character to write.
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I think you’re winning so far Tori 
thanks for sharing
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Who could turn a story thread into a competition!? 
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I named myself after the curled edible tips of something called the Ostrich fern. They grow in forested areas, generally near rivers and streams. If you ever try them, make sure you steam them well to remove the toxins. The flavour is something like asparagus I suppose. Some people like them with vinegar, but I’m strictly a butter man myself.
The province where I live, New Brunswick, is supposedly noteworthy for fiddleheads, and I guess I was looking for a regional connection. It doesn’t provide the same kick as Georgia Peach, say, or even Long Island Potato, but I figured it would do.
And I guess it’s fair to say that I have, at times, played like a vegetable.
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Mines a captcha code I could kind of pronounce and sounded interesting.
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I always thought that it might have been Russian, and the potential etymology and meaning came up in discussion within the private discussion for our team go games.
Our team was trying to come up with a nickname for each game. For the other game, against the team captained by GOkyle, we simply call the game “Kyle”, but we weren’t sure what to call the game against the team that you are captaining. Eventually, we realized that since we’re only typing it, it doesn’t matter that we were unsure how to pronounce it, so we’re just calling that game “Vso”.
Apparently, Google translate will detect “vsotvep” as Russian (всъотвеп) and translate that as “completely” or “all the way”. Could any Russian speakers shed some light?
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I’ve always wanted to learn Ruby. It’s like Python’s cute little sister :3
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I used to have a roommate. He had a programming job and always sat there programming and eating dry cakes. I learned his cake addiction and started making those myself. At the time I also started learning go. Then I ended up disliking the cakes and never made them again. Yet my nickname lives on.
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There was a time when bars (pubs?) had one or two arcade games each and neighbourhood’s children wandered from one to another spending their cash and their time.
If you were good enough you could write your name in the top list, but there was room just for three letters!
I had to choose a three-letters nickname. At first it was just my initials, but in Italy we don’t usually have a second name, so they were two and I was unsatisfied by leaving one empty or adding something random (I added “X” for a while, to have some “tech” flavour, I suppose).
Then in high school I started studying latin. I found out the latin origin of my name: Aloisius.
I still was looking for a nickname and eventually cropped it to Lisius and then Lis. I was also studying French so I changed it to Lys to have a more exotic spelling and also an extra meaning (it’s for lily but also for the heraldic iris).
Eventually I had the short nickname I was looking for and one that was also meaningful to me: it was connected to my real name, it was nice sounding, it was also related to my city, which has iris as emblem.
I started using it for signing my drawings and my letters. Some friends used for calling me and I still use it to sign my art. I made it for myself and I love it. 
Side note: now maybe you can understand also why I don’t have a tattoo despite loving them so much! 
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I simply chose my first name, because I couldn’t see any reason for completely hiding my identity.
I was quite astounded to find out, that most people don’t do this here.
I still wonder, why…
Then I added my “full name” in Chinese characters, as a student from China wrote it for me more than 25 years ago, when I asked him for my name in »Chinese«.
Luó, 羅 ≈ resembles the sound of the beginning of my (much longer) surname.
Dé-fān, 德帆 = Stephan; nice, because dé-guó 德國 for Germany is similar.
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Mind is stolen from (inspired by) a friend’s story. The story was an entry for a work competition for the anniversary of the office (maybe 150 years) to imagine the office in another 150 years. He wrote about everything being basically the same except that all the staff were tea powered robots. It tickled me given the repetitive work and the amount of tea consumed. It was only 10 or 15 years later that it came back to me when I was trying to think of a username for something. No idea how a tiny trivial memory stayed in my brain and popped out when it did.
The irony is that now I hardly drink any tea any more.
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I had the same and used Mig on the machines! Something with a Russian plane and because I liked the sound of the word. Later I added the Russian nickname of my own (English sounding) name, and it became Misjamig.
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