What does your ENWorld name mean?

[Goonalan]

I was making a film about a bunch of skaters who were far too cool to be seen with me, every time they completed some trick-

50/50 pop-shove-it fakey-whatever

This one guy would shout 'Go on Alan', after about thirty minutes of this I was fool enough to ask- 'who's Alan?'

Twenty-two years later and I'm still stuck with it.

Goonalan

 

[Oryan77]

It was 1977, somewhere in middle California. A child was born. His beauty was astounding and made doctors envious and the nurses swoon. Being the smartest baby alive, this child sat up immediately after birth and greeted everyone in the delivery room. He introduced himself as Oryan and announced that he has arrived for one reason and one reason only; to watch Star Wars on opening day!

Years later, as Oryan and Al Gore invented the internet, Oryan decided to post on a forum. To his surprise, upon registration Oryan found out that someone dared to steal his identity and called himself by the same name! How could he distinguish himself from this impostor? The only thing he could think of was to use the coolest name ever created along with the most important year in the history of man. So it only made sense to add on the number 77 to represent the year that the greatest movie & the greatest baby were introduced to the world.

 

[pukunui]

Pukunui is a little Maori boy from an old series of New Zealand children's books. My avatar is a picture of him. The name means "fat stomach" in Maori. I'm not entirely sure why I chose it: I am not Maori and I wasn't particularly pudgy at the time. I think I just liked the sound of it. Plus, it's pretty unique; I've only ever come across one or two sites where it was already taken (in which case I used pukunui81 instead). As for why I do it all lower case? That's cos I wanna be just like e e cummings ...

 

[Lanefan]

Rolled up in early 1984, Lanefan went on to become my iconic character over the next many years of play. He's in fact still out there in a currently-active world, just waiting for the main played party to catch up to his level before inflicting himself on the masses once more.

Further, in the language I was trying to dream up at the time Lanefan (as "la nefan") literally means "man of [the] moon"; as I have since become Wiccan, it just plain fits.

La-"man of the moon"-nefan

 

[Rabbitbait]

Even I don't understand my own subconscious. I have no idea where my name came from - even though I have a clear memory of the first time I used it.

 

[Wepwawet]

"Opener of the Ways"
Wepwawet is an ancient egyptian wolf deity, used to be a war god, but in later times becaume associated with the afterlife, guiding the deceased into the netherworld.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

The arch nemesis of my players from an old (and the most successful we've had) campaign.

They never defeated good old Matrix Sorcica, one day he will return MWUAHAHAHAHAHAH!

 

[DragonLancer]

When I signed up a few years back I was big into Dragonlance and so the name kinda fitted.

 

[DumbPaladin]

It's an apt, albeit mean, description of my current 3.5 character, Phelan. He's got an Int of 8, but is an otherwise kind, generous friend and not a bad leader. His above-average wisdom and charisma, status as moral compass of the party, and propensity for not falling into villains' traps, have solidified him as the glue that holds the party together. But he isn't bright.

One of the other members of the party, a female halfling rogue who was throwing a fit, called him a dumb paladin once, and he was so glum about it afterward that she felt awful for days. When I needed a name for EN World, this one came to mind.

Also, it's handy for when I'm posting questions that are obvious and easily answered by others.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The expression "Plain Sailing", taken to mean "simple, straightforward, unobstructed progress" is a derivation (via mishearing?) of the original term Plane Sailing - which was a technique for navigating at sea assuming the Earth was a flat plane, which made navigation much more straightforward.

So essentially it comes from a term from planar geometry, and one of the things I've always loved about D&D was the concept of other planes of existence and the astral plane.

Thus, when I signed up and I wanted to have a distinctive screen name and icon, I thought of the image of a boat sailing through the planes, and it brought together a fantasy theme with my love of Etymology.

Cheers!