Inspired by The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle, here’s my story. My first online handle was simply Pink Floyd. I was somewhat obsessed with them when I connected (via 2400 modem) to C-C-Chat, a ten-user simultaneous chat system. This was probably 1994. Within not too long, I was going by Pinky more than the full version. I bounced back and forth between Pinky and Zamboni Man on local BBSes.
When I logged into IRC for the first time in 1996 or so, “Pinky” and “Pink Floyd” and many derivatives thereof were taken on the quite busy EfNet. So to come up with a unique name, I just concatenated the first two things I came up with. And CheesePez was born. I finally stumbled upon Plutor in a fit of sleep deprivation the summer between High School and college. I think nowadays the most promising online handles aren’t words or names, but rather simply pronounceable strings of letters.
What’s yours?