Curious about your usernames

[pne]

So, what's the story of your usernames? What made you pick them, or how did you come up with them?

Also, if you had a free rename token, would you change your username, or are you happy with what you have? (And what would you change it to?)

When I started my first job, our login IDs on the computer systems were usually three letters long: usually first letter of given name plus the first two letters of the family name, unless that combination was already in use, in which case they'd pick some different letters of your name (e.g. first two letters of given name plus first letter of family name, or first and third letter of family name, or whatever).

So "P"hilip "Ne"wton turned into "pne". And I've had that login for so long that I've grown rather used to it (or should I say, fond of it), and so I like to take that username if it's still available (and not prohibited by minimum username length policies or whatever).

So I was rather happy that "pne" was still available on LiveJournal, with its millions of accounts. I don't think I'd change it.

Sadly, my work login is no longer "pne" ever since we switched over to a new internal network a month or so ago: we belong to a much bigger company now, so logins have to be longer for uniqueness, and I'm "pnewton" in our Windows domain. Though on a number of internal systems, I'm still "pne".

Comments

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I've long been a fan of Old English and of stars (the astronomical kind). I wanted my username to be steorra, which is the OE ancestor of our word 'star', and which I also think is an aesthetically pleasing word. But it was already taken, so I settled for tungol, another Old English word for star, but in my opinion less aesthetically pleasing.

If I could rename to 'steorra', I probably would, but it isn't available, and I'm content enough with 'tungol' not to try to come up with another alternative.