Saturday with Sach: Whats In a Name
NAMING - IN THE BEGINNING
I had the curious privilege of seeing the internet as we know it form into what it is today from my childhood. There was a dark time, a scary time, when the internet wasn't really a thing people knew about, or used. We had to do some scary stuff to get information back then. DARK things. Things like, "asking people questions in real life". Who even has time for that, right? How did we live?!
When it came time to have a presence on the internet, I went through a lot of names. The one I probably had the longest (before Sacheverell) was "Pretzel", a handle I used in a lot of MMOs and FPS games. What made me choose that name? I was probably hungry. Who knows. What mattered was that people knew me by that name, and it became a part of me. Our in-game names are, in a sense, who we are; it's not even what the name implies, or where it came from, but the association we bring with it. When someone sees our in-game name, they immediately think of us, the person - what we're like, whether we're friends or not, games we play together, all that good stuff. The nature of an in-game name isn't exactly rocket science, but there is one part of it that fascinates me to no end: the origin of a name.
WHO WE ARE TODAY, AND WHY
I would never ask of you anything I wouldn't do myself, so let's start with the origin of my in-game name, "Sacheverell". In short, it came from a love for tabletop games. Without getting into all the boring details, it was the name of an entity in a particular game that I thought sounded neat, had a neat theme, and it was fun to say aloud, besides. In my voice-acting work, it was handy to have a name that resonated in a catchphrase, and it serves that purpose well. If I had to name one regret over it though, it would be how much trouble people seem to have with it, both in spelling and spoken aloud: I've seen Sacherevell, Sachaverall, Suchaverel, and countless other variations. Out loud, it gets even sillier. A wise man once told me that I should've picked an easier name, and in many ways, he was right. If I had stuck with something simpler - say, Pretzel - there would be a lot less confusion. To be fair, I've seen a lot of people mistakenly call him "criticsquid", which seems to bother me a lot more than it bothers him. Though, the idea of replacing a citrus-based descriptor with the image of a film critic still makes me giggle a little.
WHO ARE YOU, AND WHY
Forget me for a minute, let's talk about you! What made you choose your in-game name? Is there a cool back-story, with some deeper personal meaning? Did you take it off a cereal box? Smash the keyboard with a hammer? No story is too awesome or silly! Let's hear about your in-game name!
My cousins had a free Minecraft launcher (illegal I know) and we did a lot of stuff on a server. Most of the time we tried to play survival but we ended up essentially playing creative with the amount of cheating we did. Now, this was back when EVERY command you used had to have your name on it. So, when we logged in, (because it was a free launcher and you could make up a username) we made our usernames as short as possible. Eventually we just used the first letter of our names. Mine was a. When I left the cousin's house I bought a real account and since the name "a" was taken and my favorite number was 52, I called myself a52. Later I realized that also worked as a pun on the U.S. B52 bombers. And I've just used that username for everything since. Also, if you capitalize the "a", you're spelling it wrong. It's a52, not A52.
From there I used Claire_Burmot for my GaiaOnline account, and in all my role-playing games with my friends. When I started playing FFXI in August of 2007, is when it became Clairefox. "Claire" was taken already on the Kujata server [by a mule account no less x_x], so I thought "Well my favorite animal is a fox", so I tried it and it stuck <3 FFXI also only allowed the very first character to be capitalized so that's why it's all one word. I had Clairefox on FFXI for almost 6 years before the developers started putting the MMO down the drain and we left.
Now I use it everywhere and am deeply saddened in places that I cannot. My family calls me by my regular name, but all my friends irl always call me Claire It bugs me when people leave off the "e" also :/ "Clair" just looks cut short -_-;
As a child, I would play things like webkinz and toontown and club penguin. I always had the same name and became pretty popular with other kids playing the same games. The name I had was simple. My street number (113) and the first the letters of my name (Jac). Kinda lame, but know im stuck with it as my email... As I grew older and started playing more mature games... I had a sting of random names. (Burger, BigBilly, Hulkinator, etc) Then around age 10, I discovered my love for tacos!
So How Did My Name Come to Be?
Well, around this time my friend started joking around with me about, stuff, which is not a reference to SkyDoesMinecraft. (He annoys me, I am not at all a fan) It references something else completely, and if you know what it is, good for you! This was a majestical thing called Budder. I combined that with my favorite food, and that is how BudderTaco came to be.
Where do I Use it?
I have variations that I use for different things. Forums, such as this are, always BudderTaco.
When I get social media, I plan on using Mr. BudderTaco. ( I already do for youtube.) And for any games it is BudderTaco69.
The other name I use often is Aiel. It comes from a fantasy series called Wheel of Time (I highly recommend it to everybody!). It sounds cool and it is a easy, short name.
It originally started on a forum website called DS Ultimate. It was a fun website I liked hanging around on. I though got banned quite a few times,some of them for no apparent reason. Anywho, one of the names I went by was my favorite Nintendo character and his weapon, my name being Linksaber.
I used that name for quite a bit, however I also had a DS, DS Lite, and a DSi, which I all used different names, some being ones like Tsutaja, the japanese name for the grass type starter in the game Pokemon Black and White, Snivy, and Sora, the main character in the Kingdom Hearts series.
However, my dark era of gaming had come...the most darkest, most horrible, most gut-wrenching game I ever played...Club Penguin. Yes, I was young at the time, maybe around 11 to 12 if I remember correctly. Well, I tried putting in the name Linksaber, and that was taken by somebody. Well, that got me thinking a little bit. Finally, I came up with an idea. Now, my first name, when shortened, is Tim, so, being absolutely creative, I thought of Timber. Now, I needed to have some numbers, cause everybody needs some numbers. So, I picked the numbers 444, leading my name to be Timber444.
Now we jump ahead, to the year 2010, when the game Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit had come out. I had just gotten the game, and I love the fact that you could put your own decals on the cars, which I think should've been added to the new Need For Speed: Rivals. Anywho, back on topic, I grown bored of the name Timber444. I still liked Timber, so I kept that and took off 444. I thought to myself 'This is a racing game, and most racing cars have numbers on the sides, so I should pick my favorite number.' So I did, I plastered 9 on the side of my car. However, I figured 9 was too short, so I decided to go with 10 right after it, thus the name Timber910 was born.
At first, I didn't really think that name would be used for me so much, but it turns out, it did. I started using the name for other forum websites, games, and I even have it as my Xbox Live account name and the name of my Youtube Channel.
It's an odd evolution really. Linksaber to Tsutaja to Sora to Timber444 to Timber910. And thus, that is the story of how Timber910 came to be.
My name is China His name is Denver. Originally we shared the account, but he moved with our grandma, and now dont get to see eachother much. Now its just me! but its sentimental because i miss my brother!
The people behind the names.
I really love the Tekken franchise.
'Nuff said.
And yes, they are fully functional.
After all, this way most people still call me Nox and then they ask what Eralon is so it's a way to promote my books at the same time. Of course that was not my intention, but I realized that it could be a thing when people did start to ask so I've just taken it from there ^^
P.S. I saw a Deathwatch beetle and I liked the look of it so that is also part of my name