anukul and jameel are obvious. But most people don't use their real name as an email address or LJ name, presumedly because most people have pretty ordinary names and Mike and Stephanie (or whatever) are just already taken. So here's the question (or questions really): Where did you get your LJ name? Do you use it other places? Email? Other websites? RPGs? IM? Do people call you that in real life? How did you come up with it? Obviously, a bunch of people on my friends list are wrestlers, and use their gimmick name, but if that's you, where did you come up with that?
For some reason made up names that have no obvious meaning to a person's personality (say
qiika and drfell) or that are based on a persons name (either real name or gimmick name - sui66iy and kingdomjames) seem to ring truer to me than ones that are based on something about a person's personality or hobbies (like stuntviolist or dariaphoebe - no offense to either of you), do other people feel like that? I don't think I have any like this on my friends list here, but back when i used to use Epinions a lot, the names that always really bugged me were the ones that were based on an aspect of a loved one, like bobbysmommy or joes_wife or something like that. It just seemed weird that a person chose their identity as an aspect of someone else. Kind of belittling or something? So the cultural theorist in me is really curious about this sort of thing. Please take a second to leave your name orgins and your thoughts and please point others who I don't know here to do the same. I want to see what people really think about this.
EDIT: Come on, work with me people. So far I only have one additional person that I don't know. I actually want to hear from as many people as possible on this one.
papertygre had the right idea. Think of it as a meme. 