How did you get your Callsign/Handle?

[Edmon]

Rescued this discussion from another, less awesome thread than the one it was in. How did you get your MechWarrior Callsign / Handle?

The first game I ever played that required a nickname multiplayer was Doom.

I was like, a brat back then. My friend was like "You have to have a handle and it can't be your real name", he was my mother's friend's son and much older than me.

So I put "Demon" and he said:

"You can't put Demon, that's just [stupid]*".

So I put "Edmon".

He thought that was a great name.

Little did he know I just re-arranged the letters of Demon

.

And not only did the name stick, but almost no-one seems to realise it's an anagram.

The funny part about this story? Since he left the room to get a drink and to give me some time to "think about it", he didn't realise what I had done to make the nickname. He asked me why I picked "Edmon" and I made up a lot of non-sense about Jamaica that made absolutely no sense.

And he bought it.

The rest, is 25+ year old history...



*He's british, so you can imagine the word he actually used here.

 

[KhazadDhum]

Good thread. I chose mine MANY MANY years ago.
I lived out in the country early on, and going into the city library was something of a special trip every month, so we'd spend a lot of time there. One day there I ran across a Tolkein encyclopedia, and I was fascinated by it.
I also knew that some friends of mine and I were planning on getting together and playing some Advanced D&D.
I had a couple of the basic sets of books, and only read through them, but had never done anything more than dabble in them.
The guy who was running the game said to think about what kind of character I wanted to play but he warned me that the hardest part of character creation is choosing the name.
Next trip to the library I brought along a notebook and scribbled down a ton of names from that Tolkein encyclopedia, and at one point I read Khazad Dhum, and thought that sounded like a great name for a magic user....the rest is history.
It was years before I ever got around to actually reading any Tolkein to know where the name was actually used.

 

[Fallenkezef]

Sassanach

Explained in sig

 

[mjbroekman]

"Vidarion" came from the start of a short story I was writing (close to a decade ago at this point). Originally it was the name of a company in the story, "Vidar Ion Systems", but in trying to find a nick for some game (I forget which game) where my long-used nick was already taken, I just pulled that instead. Nothing exciting and the story is still not finished.

 

[GallantDuke]

"Kernel" was a joke started by the junior officers in my unit during my time serving my compulsory national service in my country.

I was just hyper-reliable when it came down to getting things done administratively consistently that the junior officers started jokingly addressing me as 'Colonel' which outranked the Commanding Officer's who was a Lieutenant Colonel (I was only a Lance Corporal so I was super uncomfortable that I may get into trouble for it).

Eventually, the joke spread to the senior officers as well that even my direct superior, the Operation Officer (He's basically the 3rd most powerful person in the whole unit), was in on the joke as well. I doubt it reached my CO but when it came time for our unit to turn operational, my callsign was decided but I changed the spelling as a sign of respecting him and the origin of the joke. It just so happens that I did my IT diploma before serving so I can just say it's referencing to a computer kernel if anybody asks.

Speaking of which, I never used this callsign in my Campaign for Battletech as I use my Username instead (which is a Digimon joke if anybody gets it). New playthrough I guess...

 

[ronhatch]

First game I ever played where I really felt obligated to come up with a callsign was Wing Commander. I chose Scorpion, based off my astrological sign (the only thing astrology is good for). I also still remember the callsigns my brothers used... Kestrel and Griffin.

I still use it from time to time, but for whatever reason it doesn't seem appropriate to me for Battletech. I guess I just don't identify with the commander character enough.

Edit: Almost forgot, but I do always choose the scorpion face tattoo for my characters as a nod to that callsign.

 

[SmallKube]

In game my callsign is Funkenstein, which is a simple tribute to George Clinton, my absolute musical hero.

SmallKube, or Small Kube Shuggah in full, came about on a boozy boys night. I read the phrase 'small cube sugar' on the side of a bag of Tate and Lyle sugar cubes and decided it would make an excellent hip-hop moniker in the unlikely event i should ever start a career as a rapper. I have many of these (Rusty Knife should i go the the country and western route, Beverley Quim should i ever pen a romantic novel and so on).

 

[stjobe]

I chose Scorpion, based off my astrological sign (the only thing astrology is good for).

I dunno man, I'd hate to have the call sign "Cancer"

Anyway, there's no big story or anything with my handle; I chose it as a play off my actual name many many moons ago (while playing Moria on an ex-girlfriend's Mac, IIRC).

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

I just tend to brainstorm my MechWarrior handles (and names) mostly. It is sort of whatever comes to mind.

 

[KhazadDhum]

I just started a new campaign last night since my current one isn't going the way I usually like them to go, and just scrolling through the random nick names I hit upon Tin Man, and got the bright idea of calling the company "Tin Mans Toy Soldiers". Struck me as funny.

 

[Chef Boyardee]

I picked the name Monster Slayer because my pal goes by Monster King and I want to make him feel bad.

 

[Packrat]

If you saw my place, you'd know why I go by Packrat.

 

[Kodan]

My favorite name in games comes from my most favorite movie. Back in the days of the Commodore 64 and BBS sites "The Last Starfighter" was coming out in theaters. I loved the whole " Greetings Starfighter, Your missions is to defend the frontier against Zur and the Ko-Dan Armada". That whole arcade cabinet was just something awesome. Anyway back in the dinosaur age of computers you couldn't use two capital letters or special characters like - in most handles so it became Kodan. I have used that handle pretty much since 1984 and most of the time I get to have my name. Its pretty rarely taken.

My other go to name is Sivad. It came from a D&D session most awesome mage ever till he got ate by a mimic. Its my last name backwards and I tend to use it for mage names in fantasy games.

 

[stjobe]

I just started a new campaign last night since my current one isn't going the way I usually like them to go, and just scrolling through the random nick names I hit upon Tin Man, and got the bright idea of calling the company "Tin Mans Toy Soldiers". Struck me as funny.

Are you me? Because that's exactly what I did last evening, down to the company name...

 

[Hopit]

I'm a Warhammer 40k... well... fanatic and a proud Alpha Legionnaire fan. So I go by with callsign "Alpha"
And if my some reason or another I die, "Omega". Afterwards I have to accept my destiny

 

[Kereminde]

I cannot confirm nor deny where Valia Delune got her callsign at, but Yang would do best to stop snickering at it. He should ask what happened to the Schäfer Foundation job. ("I swear, it was gonna be easy money. And . . . I don't want to talk about it anymore.")

Kereminde, on the other hand, dates back to a long time ago when I needed something different to go by on the Internet which was uniquely mine and not derived from an author or other fiction - I'd way too many re-imaginations at the time. This was one of two which stuck. How did it happen? Mostly trying to shuffle sounds phonetically until I got something vaguely Germanic-sounding and ran with it. (And if you shorten it to "Kere" it's two syllables so it carries that.)

(Also, on the subject of callsigns and flight names, I'm almost surprised we don't have a 'Mobius One' yet.)

 

[D-Day]

As from the other thread, D-Day is my Regiment nickname. Taken from a certain comic book hero with whom I share the same last name. Took a good few years post-service for the other vets to learn my first name, let alone use it lol.

 

[scJazz]

Everyone thinks it is South Carolina Jazz... it isn't.
Heh... my 9th Grade English Teacher gave me this nickname.
I was (am) one of those too smart for my own good types. At the start of 9th grade I had already read The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo by A. Dumas (unabridged English versions) and children's versions in French. Get the picture? My teacher would often gently tease me by riffing a greeting based on my name... Joshua Scott Jewell. Jay, JJ, Jimmy Jem, Dr J... etc. I never did Vocabulary homework because I already knew all the words and it was just tedious.

One day I handed in the Vocab assignment with one entry filled in... I don't remember the word... but the sentence I wrote had something to do with jazz music.

My teacher chuckled. "Seriously, this is So Cool... Jazz" you didn't know that one?

That was it... totally stuck... he said "so cool jazz" when I bothered to do an assignment, etc. Eventually it shortened to scJazz.

10 years after I graduated I bumped into him... "hey scJazz! How have you been!". 30+ years later and we run into each other occasionally... I am still scJazz.

 

[Rørik Þrumsålr]

Jötunn is the handle I usually use in games, it's old Norse for "Giant" or "Troll". It's an evolution of a callsign I had in my military days.

 

[Nakkivene]

Some years ago I transitioned from using various obscenities in my native tongue because I discovered that I really didn't like people knowing where I am from and especially my countrymen chatting with me like we have something in common. I settled on Itwastuesday because I was playing M. Bison in SSF4 at the time, but going to other games I started to regret that too, with all the kids coming telling me what day it is right now which always hurts my brain even though I don't expect kids having seen terrible old video game movies. It's not Itstuesday. Where's the joke in telling me what day it's right now? So I'm back to using random tags other than in games I play with people I know.

In real life it's Sieni 2 (mushroom 2), or S2 or sometimes ässä (ace, not because of poker but because of how it sort of derives from just saying s). It's because when we were first playing tabletop RPG's the other players couldn't tell me and my friend apart. He got to be mushroom because he poisoned a bunch of hippies in Cyberpunk with amanita virosa I think, and I was the other one who showed up far less frequently. Some others in my home city have nicknames such as Foam, Seasoning, Plastic Bag, Cheek, Message, Gonorrhea and so on...

In Battletech I just try to RP a bit as it's a singleplayer game.