Today I started thinking about usernames. We all have one here. Some use their real name directly, but most have completely made one up. What’s the background of your username? Is there a story behind it, did you just grab the name from the nearest cereal box, or did a cat conveniently walk across your keyboard? Or something else entirely?
I ended up choosing Chuck Peddle as my username because, at the time of registering here, I happened to be reading Brian Bagnall’s excellent book, The Story of Commodore: A Company on the Edge, which covers the history of Commodore. Chuck Peddle was an American engineer who designed the MOS Technology 6502 processor. This particular processor went down in history especially as the processor for the Commodore 64 computer. Without Chuck, we probably would never have gotten the Republic’s Computer.
Additionally, Chuck Peddle somehow feels like a funny name, it rolls off the tongue easily. So, that’s why Chuck Peddle. A bit by chance, but chosen.
Ituhippinen is a combination of several things. When I was younger (and still now), I was a big fan of Madventures and Tunna Milonoff, whom his partner Riku Rantala once dubbed a “fucking sprout-hippie” (vitun ituhippi). “Ituhippi” (sprout-hippie) is a great derogatory term for vegetarians / nature lovers in general.
Why Ituhippinen instead of Ituhippi? The “-nen” suffix was added simply because, in Finland, our surnames just happen to end that way.
I was about 13 years old when six of my friends and I decided to buy a shared moped. In the mid-70s, we were offered a green Pappa-Tunturi for 140 marks. We each chipped in 20 marks and bought the moped secretly from our parents.
We kept it well hidden in the woods, and it saw heavy use every day. One day, I was cruising on the slightly tuned moped and ended up getting a bit of air on an uneven path. The front wheel dug into the sand, and I flew over the handlebars. My six friends ran toward me at full speed, and I thought they were worried about me. The concern was misplaced, as everyone was actually worried about the moped
At the end of the summer, we sold the moped for 70 marks. That 10-mark investment for a whole summer of riding was a wonderful time in the life of a Pappa-Tunturi.
I have to say, I have no clue where I came up with the name, but I’ve had it since I was under ten years old. Somewhere, there is still a pillow I crafted in elementary school textile class that says WAPPIE in capital letters. The same handle was first used on kiekko.tk and the Peliplaneetta forum, and later almost everywhere I’ve had to create a username. In Dutch, I think it means some kind of crazy tin-foil hat.
I have used this nickname for nearly twenty years, almost without exception on every platform and forum I’ve been a part of.
The nickname is taken from an R. A. Salvatore book; my favorite character was Wulfgar, son of Beornegar. Beornegar sounded so great to my ears that I adopted it immediately.
Let’s start the story from the very beginning, back in middle school, where we played a lot of CS with friends. Well, I had to come up with a nick, and the first one was “rusher”—maybe it reflected my playstyle.
Then things moved forward, years passed, and I felt the nickname no longer represented me, so it was time to come up with a new one. I’ve always liked astronomy, and Enceladus—what a nice-sounding moon. That became my nickname, which then got shortened to Ence by my friends. For obvious reasons, that actual Ence nickname is hard to get on any forum So here I am as Ensse.
As a “funny” side note, our CS clan name in middle and high school was [alistajat] (the subduers); we used this to honor “Alistaja-Jorkki” (Subduer-Jorkki), who taught math and science in high school.
In 2003, we were having a LAN party in the school’s computer club, playing Operation Flashpoint. I noticed that the game put AI soldiers with very Czech names into the empty player slots. I trolled my friends and took one for myself as a decoy, and it stuck ever since.
The fanny pack man embodies the typical regular at investment fairs. Brown leather jacket, pencil mustache, a fanny pack, and a large portfolio of dividend stocks.
In elementary school English class, everyone was given an English name that somewhat resembled their own; for the most part, it was enough if the first letter was the same. I ended up with the coolest of the “action names,” Jack, and decided to wear it with pride.
When playing games, I needed to come up with something to add to the end, so being Finnish, a “fin” suffix found its way in. Over the years, that unimaginative combination has become my signature, and I use it extensively.
I think I’ve been using this nickname in various places for over 20 years. It originally came from a foal I owned whose sire was the famous Coktail Jet, which is why the spelling is a bit funny.
For me, this username has stuck in my mind since my younger brother, who is 2 years younger than me, played a top-down (strategy?) computer game back in the 90s. In it, you played online against some random people, and I can’t quite remember if there was a main point to it, or if you just moved around and chatted in some other reality
The neighbor’s boy called this game “sumujen saari” (Island of Mists). Sometimes when I watched the game over his shoulder, a character named “xr4ym4n” was adventuring there. I don’t know the guy, where he got that username from, let alone why it has stuck in my mind for decades.
So here I am as Ensse.
