Names

Here's a history of names; a book of places and people who were actually me.

What's in a name?

Why Grifter Hans?

Grifter Hans is my new name for playing Blizzard's Diablo II. I was sitting at home trying not to think about my Physical Chemistry class homework, and I decided to play some network games with my little brother instead of working on it. I had just gotten a second copy of the game, so I needed to think of a new name for my character rather than using the same old name again. To make a long story short, I am also Grifter Hans.

How many names do you have?

I like to make up a new online name every six months or so, just to keep myself awake. It's fun to make up different habits and interests for online-chats, especially if you lost your local RPG group (I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, but the advent of some online computer games which I won't mention by name caused large numbers of people quit RL interactions in favor of virtual ones and quashed my clan) and are too shy to meet people in person.

Do you have a list of names and places?

Not really. I have recently determined that my memory is missing many events that took place between 1991 and 1998, so the following list is probably less than perfect. With that in mind, however:

Merle is my name in the Real World. I'm currently (Spring 2003) a student at the University of Maryland.
Kippy was my first online name. I played DragonMUD, this really cool AberMUD which has been online for many many years. Originally based in Germany, it moved to an American server a few years ago. I haven't played the game for a long time, and I no longer remember the TELNET address. It was a wonderful place, though, and my memories of it are all fond. I'm sure if you search for it on MUDconnect you will be able to track it down.
Quickbeam was my first original web character name. I got it when I first moved onto Tripod's service in the winter of 1997.
Lynx and Mina were the names of my two characters in my Gameboy game, Final Fantasy Adventure, which is the first game in the Secret of Mana series.
Valeron was the original name of my character in Final Fantasy VII on my Playstation. I thought I came up with the name on my own, but it was actually from E.E. "Doc" Smith's quite cool Skylark of Valeron story from his other series (besides the Lensman books). I think that the Book Club reprinted a lot of his work in a single-volume tome, but I haven't been able to get hold of it.
Since Valeron was totally not available in Hotmail's email address list, I added an extra 'a' and became Vaaleron. This has been my web name for a long time, and it also matches my email address.
(John) Percival Hackworth was my name for online IRC activities starting in Fall 2000 or so. This name is another one I took from a book, in this case The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
Kitsune-kun and Nanaki-kun are some nicknames from last year. I actually got Nanaki-kun as my eBay name.
Leaf and AnimeTournesol are other IRC-chat-type names that I used during 2002 on and off. Tournesol is the name of a song by Metal that is stored in the High-Velocity-SID-Collection, "HVSC." I recommend searching for it if you get a chance; it's a large archive of music programmed for the original sound chip from the Commodore 64 computer system. Anime is a nickname for the animation style popular in Japan in the late twentieth century.
Scrub is my new nickname in Biochemistry III class this semester (Spring 2003). The purpose of the name is to describe my current hairstyle, which resembles a scrub brush.
I'm Fifth Ork on America On-Line's AOL Instant Messanger (AIM) service. I'm also Aru Garou, but that's another story. Don't waste your time adding Aru to your list, as I have it set to block almost all of the network automatically. Fifth Ork, however, is open to receive messages from everyone.

[Zell from Final Fantasy VIII used his own initials on the message board and EVERYONE recognized him instantly.]

Who needs more than one name?

It's good to have many nicknames. When you are questing to become a Legend of the 'net, it is impossible to tell if you are truly famous until people you don't know start comparing you to yourself (under different handles). If you always use the same name, then no one will dare to tell you to your face exactly how cool you really are.

Also, everyone on the internet is lying to you and out to get your valuables. The first step in a solid defense is a good offense, so you should make as much as possible of your online self different from who you really are. In this way, the enemies you do not know you have will not know you either, saving you a lot of pain and annoyance later.

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