# how did you get your "name"?



## BrianC503

so i dont piss off the burnouts, my disclaimer is that i DID try the search option to see if a thread like that existed, but the search was either too vroad, to narrow, or returned too many results. maybe i didnt look hard enough... i dont know
* i have never been on a forum where i felt as if i needed to post a disclaimer like this... kind of different...

by name, i dont mean forum login...

when i hiked the appalachian trail i was told that thru hikers named each other. i met a massive man names 'little green turtle', and he was big on naming people. we kicked it at a hostel and got drunk at the damascus brewery a few nights, and he decided that my name shoutld be 'cascade storm'... maybe because im from oregon. i thought about it a few days, and decided to ditch the name. the first reason was that we hadnt done any hiking together. he just wanted to go around naming people, and im not his son. 

when i thought about it more, i realized that all i wanted to be was me... im brian. im not running from anything, im not hiding from anything... thats not my journey. my journey is to be myself, and to get away from a lot of the distractions that take me away from enlightenment.

there are 3 groups of people i have met that use made up names:
1. hikers
2. hobos/travelers/call them what you will
3. gangbangers

ive never really sat down with anybody and asked them about their name, or why they dont use their birth name... i often assume that either they are on the run, or that they dont like the name that their parents give them. 

so you know the story of my name... my mom gave it to me. whats the deal with yours?


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## Kim Chee

I go by my given name (the one I got at birth). I've been called lots of things though, but really did not answer to them so they didn't stick. I bet I've been called some funny ones behind my back. 

Here's some I've heard:
Santa
Father Time
Montana Mike
Jesus

Used to be that a person didn't name themselves and that the name they were given had something to do with their appearance, actions or some kind of mishap.

I have a code name which I'll never utter and an Indian name which I've never heard.


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## Tude

ha - I have an attitude. My other nickname was awarded to me on my initiation to a wild mtb club - we'd meet at the tallest hill in the city - at 10 pm with full lights and ride down the face of it then bomb the city streets, parking garages and construction sites - then hit a bar for a pitcher and then off riding again - we called ourselves Tour de Bar. Wild times, wild accidents - I spent some time in the hospital with multiple rib injuries and a punctured lung. But the name they gave me was kind of a naughty name - due to the big tank of a bike I was riding at the time.


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## Durp

hahaha I have lots of names. I go by Jim tho. One of my favorites was chuck o fuck. idk where it came from, if faded memory serves me right it has something to do with convincing a bunch of strangers my name was chuck, and showing up hammered to a buddies party with 50+ people I have never seen carrying on about not giving a fuck, hence, chuck o fuck.


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## DesertRat

I have a few names, besides the one given me at birth.

One that was bestowed upon me by a hacker (still use that one often), but I prefer the one I use here, as I live in the desert, and I have whiskers.

I'm certain that I was called a few things by my ex-girlfriends that I'm better off not knowing about.


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## Jaguwar

I go by Jag, like the car, because it's been my online nickname since like 1998 and I like it (actually it's Jaguwar, but I will answer to Jag). I use it in real life, too : our boss uses her middle name, which is the same as my first name, and using my nickname avoids confusion.


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## Lefty

My name was meant to be an insult, as I have severe scarring on the left side of my body. For a time I had a lot of trouble with most everything, being left handed... It also fits my lifestyle, I tend to leave a lot of shit behind. I like it though, better then the ones I best not mention here lol


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## Antelope Bob

Got my name from some old timers, like Boxcar Jim, Whistle Stop, and Maggie Rails, when I was new to riding rails, about 35 years ago. They gave me the name because I jumped train as easily as an antelope jumps a fence (can't do that anymore). Needless to say the name has stuck with me for many years and its one I am proud to have been given. 
Great thread by the way.


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## haze6774

I was brown man from a bunch of crazy kids.. Then I met Coyote and he inspired me to travel and renamed me Brown Bearr and sent me on my path of happiness and adventure


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## crow pearson

I got my name crow because i like to watch the sky and be in the highest place i can find. So a friend of mine decided to name me after a bird. He first thought of swallow or hawk, but he thought those where to fancy for me. So he named me crow as sort of a mocking nickname, because crow's are a real plague where i come from.


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## Jaguwar

I like that, that's a good story. 
And I like people who remember to look UP.


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## Deleted member 2626

Tatanka is Buffalo in sioux Lakota. real name is a 30's 40's or 50's name. Lloyd. nuff said, I use an alias though for email and fb so no family can really find it.


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## Durp

Lloyd is a good name, just like Michael, I have nothing but good things to say about the folks that have came through my life with those names In real life.


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## Your Mom in Brazil

He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy!


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## Odin

*Muad'Dib*


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## finnsphillipps

I got my name from a Hells Angel named whitey. 
When I was 14


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## Venatus

I dunno, some folks in the slabs call me straight edge, but otherwise i go by jasper or ven, and i admit i just dont like people knowing or using my real name, because it makes me stick out like a sore thumb.


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## psychofoamer

My Mom gave me my name


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## yellowbrickfreeway

I probably won't go by it now that I'm back in the lower 48, but recently I went out to Alaska to find fishing work. Some of the natives (a lot of them were teaching me skills I'd need on the water while I was looking for work) found out my favorite boat was called the "U.S.S. Maggot," so for a while they were calling me the Yup'ik word for 'maggot.' Haha, then I got hired on a boat, and after we got back on land, I ran into one of the guys, and this conversation ensued:

"You have fished! You are no longer 'Maggot.' You have transformed, now.... You are 'Chivak'"
"What is Chivak?"
"Chivak...... Black Fly."

He made it sound so epic. Cracks me up!


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## Jaguwar

LOL that's both cute and cool. Respect... 

Sent using Tapatalk.


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## WanderLost Radical

I usually go by my birth name (Carl), but in a group of friends, I answer by many names. Long story short: last winter, I was new to a bar I am now the most regular customer, so no one knew me back then. Was like -20 outside and I got super drunk and passed out at the bar. 

After the show, a bunch of the regulars started jamming super loud, so one girl there thought I had nowhere to sleep, if I was trying to sleep at the bar, so she approached me and asked me my name. The thing is, if you talk to me while I sleep, ill answer you while sleeping, but i never tell the truth lol. So I said my name's Hugo. She asked me if I had a place to sleep, I said no. So she left me alone to make some phone calls for guests house or whatever to get me a roof for the night. Unsuccessfully. But by that time I kinda sobered up, woke up and said I was fine, that I had somewhere to sleep, and left the bar to head home. 

Maybe a month later, i entered the bar and a few people I didnt know were playing cards, so I joined them and introduced myself as Carl. The barman who was there the first night looked at me, confused, and told me: Isn't your name Hugo?? And I look at him even more confused: hum... no??? 

So he told me the whole story (and apparently he called me Hugo that whole month and I always answered to it) and it became an inside joke between the whole bar, and shit went off the rail, so now people call me Carl, Hugo, Carlhugo, Ludovik, or any name they want and I usually answer to it ahaha


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## EtherealLifeForms

Jazzy is my real name, short for Jasmine (birth name). Ive been called everything from red (red head) to Jazz to Yasimin all derived from my birth name or natural appearance or the persons ethnic pronounciation. Some people ask if Jasmine is my real name & no, Im not a stripper ~ no judgement passed to anyone that may be  My mom thought I was a boy until I was born & scrambled for a name when I arrived in this world with all my feminine glory..She happened to be drinking Jasmine tea at the time so0o here I am..
Most people that know me say Im pretty Jazzy anyway  lol. I suppose it is fitting..


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## urchin

My mom and I used to fight a lot and during one she said my friends and I looked like street urchins. Years later when I got dreads I started to take up this name as an act of defiance and reclamation.


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## outlawloose

I'm fascinated by the pseudonyms people adopt, so here is a visual history of my false identities over the years.

My first and longest running was handed down to me by my older sisters when I was a kid, and lasted about 20 years. I was the youngest, a shorty and always trailing behind, so somehow I got the name Ankles.

To me it meant underdog, the downtrodden, the bottom rung. So I said fuck it, let's see what the bottom rung is capable of! For close to 10 years I wrote the name everywhere.




















Everyone knew me as Ankles, even in the Mayors office. But I grew to hate the name. I wanted something with grit, and I wanted to pick it myself. My name, my choice.

I was painting a lot of walls with paint rollers and listening to plenty of country-western music, which is how I came up with Rawhide.




Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'




Throu rain, wind and weather, hellbent for leather!




By the time I moved to North America I'd totally killed off Ankles and left everyone who knew me by that name. Ankles Suicide here: 

Living in Toronto the third name I adopted was Krause (rhymes with house). I liked the strong constonants, Jewish-sounding word (I got a lil Jew in me) and it's German for curly-hair, which I have.










At the same time I began riding freight and writing hobo monikers, something I've been fascinated with forever. I experimented with a number of names but settled on The Broadcaster.









I'm still very much active as The Broadcaster, so I don't want to explain why I came up with that name but there's a lot of theory behind it. I still leaving a trail of microphones in every city I visit and on every train I ride.

Lastly my screen name Outlaw Loose comes from the old Marty Robbins gunslinging tune Big Iron. Outlaw appears at the end of one sentence and loose starts the next, but I loved how they fit together.

All these words have a lot of history to me and mark the different stages of my life. At the end of the day, I still prefer friends to call me by my birth name, cos it'll never change. It's the most honest, I suppose.


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## Desperado Deluxe

@outlawloose, cheese and rice since when are you a bad ass outlaw graffitti artist? pretty sure ive seen some of the broadcaster around it looks familiar.


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## Deleted member 8978

I am still in an ongoing process to make "quad8" a traveling name. But I'll go ahead and explain.

I read about the CSX 8888 incident that occurred in 2001. It was where a locomotive slipped out of Stanley Yard in Walbridge, Ohio with no one to control it. Although it seemed tragic, it made me think about the drama and bullshit I dealt with in the past. I just wanted to run away from drama the same way that locomotive ran away from that yard, and surprisingly I have a few times. I later found out that no one took control of me or anything as many times as I ran away from such drama. But that is what led me to come up with "quad8".

If you are tired of the bullshit going on in your life and you think you're losing the battle, don't give in. If CSX #8888 can run away from Stanley Yard with no one controlling it, you can run away from all negativity with no one controlling you. Fear nothing, conquer everything.


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## Rob Nothing

Let's see

Q ball
White Satan
Rail Rat
south pause
russian spy
gris
rob

qball -- my dad started calling me after the first time they shaved my head. my skin is pretty white..
White satan -- when I was in high school there was a party with a karaoke machine and I went up and sang moody blue's nights in white satin, with a voice that had already developed to it's full bass capacity..
Rail Rat -- the first time I landed in jail and naturally people ask how you landed.. and I had longish disheveled hair then.
south pause -- the first boxing club I joined, I'm left and people observed on saturday spar days that I have a tendency to 'pause' and feel out the opponent for a long time before I swung.
russian spy -- I've been called this lots of times actually, with differing variations. but the last group of people I was living with for a couple of months during an internship and because we did everything together, everything short of sleeping, they thought it odd I was so withdrawn and non talkative, when everyone else became so chummy right off. 
gris-- was given me at one of my later engagements when a roomie figured me to be a grizzly bear by the way I snore.
Rob-- I go by rob officially for convenience as my real name is native american and makes life unnecessarily complicated.


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## cosmicguru

well i got the name gresham from red down at burnside skate park he gave me that nick name case I'm from gresham i been skating there send i was a young ass kid my dad wood drop me off to go skate down there every day and the name just sorta stuck


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## BigChase

Big Chase. Well, the Chase part came from stealing cars and running from the cops when I was young and dumb and the Big part I don't really have a say in. Sorta comes natural when you're 6'6 300lb.s


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## Ray Lockwood

Got my name Ray (Raylan) from my mother, Raylene but started getting called Radio around 2001 by some punx in Montreal because I always have a boombox


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## xpolx

my names polly an i got described as being more polly spanner than polly anna, was living on a boat at the time so it kinda stuck


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## Rob Nothing

Because I sound like a jerk in my previous post and because most of it I made up, just for the joy of writing, I just tried to delete but can't.

So I used to read a lot more than I do now, and I heard about freida Fromm, the psychiatrist famous for bringing the author of "never promised you a rose garden" out of her terminal schizophrenia while she was still only an adolescent - from I think Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist.
Anterrabae was one of the afflicted's imaginary gods, in her book. And that's what I write, when I feel like tagging something.

Other than that I don't go by anything but my given name.


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## AlwaysLost

My names Nemo and Lost, its cause I'm clueless.


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## AlwaysLost

crow pearson said:


> I got my name crow because i like to watch the sky and be in the highest place i can find. So a friend of mine decided to name me after a bird. He first thought of swallow or hawk, but he thought those where to fancy for me. So he named me crow as sort of a mocking nickname, because crow's are a real plague where i come from.



Crows are sacred like the Raven


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## CelticWanderer

I'm known by everyone around here as Paul the Human. My buddy got a cat already named Paul so when I hung around there it could get confusing. So I became Paul the Human, not be confused with Paul the cat. Also for some reason when people meet me they're surprised I'm real and I've never really understood that.


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## BadKidNick

BrianC503 said:


> so i dont piss off the burnouts, my disclaimer is that i DID try the search option to see if a thread like that existed, but the search was either too vroad, to narrow, or returned too many results. maybe i didnt look hard enough... i dont know
> * i have never been on a forum where i felt as if i needed to post a disclaimer like this... kind of different...
> 
> by name, i dont mean forum login...
> 
> when i hiked the appalachian trail i was told that thru hikers named each other. i met a massive man names 'little green turtle', and he was big on naming people. we kicked it at a hostel and got drunk at the damascus brewery a few nights, and he decided that my name shoutld be 'cascade storm'... maybe because im from oregon. i thought about it a few days, and decided to ditch the name. the first reason was that we hadnt done any hiking together. he just wanted to go around naming people, and im not his son.
> 
> when i thought about it more, i realized that all i wanted to be was me... im brian. im not running from anything, im not hiding from anything... thats not my journey. my journey is to be myself, and to get away from a lot of the distractions that take me away from enlightenment.
> 
> there are 3 groups of people i have met that use made up names:
> 1. hikers
> 2. hobos/travelers/call them what you will
> 3. gangbangers
> 
> ive never really sat down with anybody and asked them about their name, or why they dont use their birth name... i often assume that either they are on the run, or that they dont like the name that their parents give them.
> 
> so you know the story of my name... my mom gave it to me. whats the deal with yours?




No bad dog, only it was no bad kid why you do that.

Response always the the same thing too.




Idk


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## Phoenixx

Shugar mouse. First girl I traveled with named me that cuz Im a little chick and always takin care of people.


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