Where Did Your Username Come From And How Old Is It?

[Willie the Duck]

The Willie of 'Willie the Duck' is a character from Larry Elmore's Snarfquest cartoon from the back of Dragon magazine back in the day. He is, surprisingly, not a duck*, but instead a giant evil dragon (real name Kizarvexius). He got hit by lightning and developed classic cartoon amnesia, and became convinced he was a docile little duck named Willie.
*Whether I am (an IRL human in-character as) a duck or not depends entirely on whether it makes for a good joke or not, there is no canon on the matter.

I read the original strips, and then was reminded of them when they were produced in a collection in 2000, 2002, or 2003 (looks like they were put out several times in a 3-year timespan, and I have no idea which is the one I saw). I've been rather forthright about having a TBI from resisting a mugging back in the 90s, and kinda had some affection for the character.

I was looking around for a new forum handle -- my original UseNet one was some 8-character combo based on my real name (not sure exactly what), then I became SoCrates after Bill&Ted's Excellent Adventure, then WistfulD (short for 'Wistful Dreamer,' a reference to this) -- and this seemed as good as any. At bare minimum, it telegraphed 'doesn't treat himself too seriously,' which was the vibe I was going for.

I knew about Runequest ducks, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and of course all the real world and cartoon ducks floating about in the collective zeitgeist. I was not prepared for all the other people with duck-related nicknames (like whomever it was in the LaNasa saga) in TTRPGs.

 

[Blue]

Mine is from a teenaged nickname I still use in RL. I use it with two variations around the interwebs because there are other people out there who also go by Blue, though I believe here it goes back to the Eric Noah days. Back in the modem-BBS days I had some other handles, but this has been my main since the internet was text-only (shout out to LYNX browser). I do have one other one I use for internet gaming that's a bit more unique so I can get it with regularity, which was actually the name of a god in a D&D 3ed homebrew setting I ran two campaigns totaling 11 years of play.

 

[Blue]

Twosix was my college nickname, from a risqué joke made by a friend that will not pass muster with Eric’s grandmother. Since I was in college in the late 90s, it ended up being used as my online handle for a lot of places on the then-nascent internet.

Do all the new kids call you SixSeven?

 

[Blue]

Kind of related to usernames, do people have a reason behind their profile pic? Mine is because one time a friend called me a damn dirty ape, so I changed my profile pics and waited for him to notice.

This isn't my usual profile picture, but it's the one I've been using here forever. I had to re-find the original on my hard drive when the forum software updated a few years back and the resolution got a lot better, luckily I still had it.

My normal one a scan a coworker did when I drew myself with sharpie on a post-it-note on something for them, which they including in the email back.

 

[Corinnguard]

Kind of related to usernames, do people have a reason behind their profile pic?

Just added my profile pic recently. I came across it on Yahoo Images one day while looking for pics of Asian Dragonborn and took a liking towards it.

 

[el-remmen]

My user name on here was originally Nemmerle, based on the archmage of Roke in Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea. It was in the Eric Noah days. At some point after the rebirth of the boards when all was lost (so post 2002), I abused my mod powers to change my name to el-remmen, the mirror of "Nemmerle" with a hyphen thrown in for good measure. It came from a joke about an evil mirror universe version of myself that I used to pretend to be in the old ENworld IRC chat. It stuck.

 

[djotaku]

I actually used to DJ under this name about 25 years ago, when I first started using it. I use it all over the net, but sometiems someone else has beat me to it and I add "the" in front of it.

I have one username that is from 1996 that survives as my hotmail email address and is related to AOL and Final Fantasy 6.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Mine's the name of the character I was playing on the X-Men themed MUSH (code named Paragon or Silveryes at various times) back when I met my wife. Goes back almost 30 years now. I use some variation of his name (often Thomas with a series of numbers) or his code name(s) most places.

 

[Nikosandros]

Mine is from at least 1999. It comes from an NPC in a very long running campaign. However, I picked it because I liked the sound, the character himself was not a good person...

The name itself was probably inspired by the wizard Nicodemus in the Fighting Fantasy game-book City of Thieves.

 

[Byrd]

Kind of related to usernames, do people have a reason behind their profile pic? Mine is because one time a friend called me a damn dirty ape, so I changed my profile pics and waited for him to notice.

Yup.
Byrd <--> Burr(ed)