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 first name is Alexander, or Alex
KL are my middle name initials
12 made it a catchy username, as I was turning 12 the next year (I turned 13 November 16th)
You can see your own skin (Inventory screen, hand, etc) but other players can't.
Then came SecilleKaradriel after that after two roleplay characters... Red_Hope came from my favorite color and me scrounging for a nice word to use after that for Gaiaonline. That became my primary name on several avatar sites before I opted for something a bit more name-like, and while coming up with the name, I ended up with Shireling, dropped the 'G' and became Shirelin instead. That's now what I use everywhere that the name isn't taken. Everywhere else, I'm left scrambling for some derivative of Kali, Kaliea, etc.
ChibiFerret was my name for myself on Spore and on Twitter, because it was my nickname mixed with something I was obsessed with a few years back.
Cyonna (my MC handle) comes from Shirelin not being available, as well as none of my derivatives. XD I stole it from my best friend, who has it for one of his World of Warcraft toons.
A friend lent me Diablo and Myst as my first pc games.
My 2 room mates and I loved the game so we got internet access to play it online
and I found out how hard it can be to find an appealing username, that wasn't a jumble of random numbers,
that someone else didn't use first.
Back then Diablo's Battle.net didn't use passwords, so you'd have to find a new nick nearly every day.
Since, at the time, I played several paper rpg games, I started using 2 names I used for those games.
Raven_Shadow and Jynx_PathFinder.
While modding for Sims 3 for 2 diferent websites (using Jynx and Raven Shadow) a friend bugged me to use
X-Fire, eventually I did, using the nick Master_Jynx, to be smart aleck, and when he bugged me to try Minecraft,
I used the same nick to prevent more confusion.
When I decided to have that stroke of genius, I was a HUGE Mario craze. Like insanely. I always liked Goombas anyhow, so I decided to go with KingGoomba. That name was taken, so, what else is similar to king? MASTER! And here I am today. I've moved onto the name CafeUdon (noodle craze) then now, PapyroKinesis. That means the power of warping paper. Woot.
Terminator + 'Tater = Taterinator. Then I added an "i" prefix and slipped an 8 in there somewhere. I don't even why.
So now I'm stuck with iTaterin8r. LOL
I want to change it so bad. The potato thing kinda sticks for some reason. I've been going with "SirTaters" or just "Taters" recently.
I just kinda started brainstorming at Z and it came to me, grew on me, and i used it from then on.
(Mind you I have a few others like WindUpBunny, Catdisc, and AsteroidCookie :P)
I read the book Star Wars: The Lost Legion, which is from the Decide Your Destiny series (it's Goosebumps style), and I took the quiz at the start and read through the story, and at the end (my actual ending, not like I got killed so I went back and changed my choice), my Clone Trooper got the nickname Ace. I liked it and it stuck. I started to put Ace as all of my gamer profles, but eventually I decided it wasn't personal enough. I am a person who likes complex logic puzzles and mathematical equations, so I decided to so something logical. A is letter 1 in the alphabet, c is letter 3, and e is letter 5. My Minecraft name is Ace135ecA (wouldn't have the ecA, but that was taken), and that was taken here so I made it A1c3e5. Now I use it for passwords, user names, and everything. I am not Noah B****. I am Ace135
Well. In the beginning I went by a few names. Playing StarCraft, and other games, Infirst went by TheDarkest, being inspired by the (in my eyes) cool dark templars of Protoss in StarCraft(1)
At the same time I had various names i used for emails too.
Later on, around the time i played Diablo 2 and other games, I changed to using TheAvenger. Not sure exactly why. I recall one time someone asked me if it was because of the comic "The Avengers", but at the time I didn't even know those cartoon heroes.
Some time later, probably 10+ years ago, I had a notion. I ought to find a unique and fitting name to use online. I didn't feel I had anything to go on related to myself, other than my name, (You know how those teen years are) so I started with that.
My name isn't.that special. Martin is a common name around the world. But it does not take mich digging to find out its origins is the roman name "Mars", name of the god of war.
Cool I thought. But Mars is a pretty plain name, albeit an interesting meaning.
So I took some time to ponder more, and as i encountered the Harry Potter forums on Warner Brothers, and were baffeled, yet fascinated by the roleplays being played on the forums there, I got an idea. I had always been interested in J.R.R.Tolkiens world, books, characters, and last but not least; languages. Knowing he had made many languages for the sentient species of hos world, with vocabulary and grammar, I decided in a nerdy zest, that THIS would be where I found my internet name.
After looking over the languages, I fell for the Elven ones. Sindarin were the biggest one amongst the scores of fans. And were even a language one could learn to speak, based on the amounts of material Tolkien left. Yet being an oddball, I chose Quenya. A less developed Elven language, which was thus less complete, but in Tolkiens lore, more aincent.
And so began the transformation of my name.
Going through meaning, i translated god of war, war god, and other synonyms into Quenya, but found none that I felt fit, or had the right feeling. As I became frustrated over not fimding any likable names, it crossed my mind, that Mars were als the name of a planet. A planet we sometimes refer to as "the Red Planet". Quenya had no words for planet though, but using "Red World" i forged together a name with the right feel, and at least remotely related to a god of war;
Carnilio
Since then I have used this name almost exclusively. Anywhere and anyplace online. I have met people around the world that I've befriended outside games and forums, who first, or even still, know me as "Carnilio".
So it is for sure. My IGN is a part of me. And it has shaped me, just as I shaped it.