how did you get your "name"?

[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

 

[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..

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[AlwaysLost]

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

 

[AlwaysLost]

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

 

[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.

 

[BadKidNick]

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

 

[Phoenixx]

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

 

[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

Reintroduction/update

Left side of skull cracked open. Contained my own bleeding and saved my life. 14 staples.

Got attacked with a tweaker with a hammer and shattered what was left of my left hand. 7 broken bones, had pins, lost mobility in pinky, also collapsed left lung.

Cataract surgery, left eye... great genetics

House fire melted left foot to ground

Karma? Self fulfilling prophecy? Luck? I think not. Shit people with no remorse, maybe some lack of awareness.

Current situation all fucked up

Want to travel but am not in shape. Detoxing.
Head injury throbs, extreme hypertension and tinnitus to where I can barley hear out of left ear. I feel like I'm going to die.

Housed up near hop in Cumberland and really wanting to leave but should probably be in the hospital... Our lovely government gave me wrong covid shot and my organs feel like shit. ( I fought like hell not to get it, our government is fucked and I am no jar head.)

Be careful out there, the world of divider's and blind ralliers.

Thank you for letting me vent here, sorry if I seem like a drag

 

[sevedemanos]

given name ends in ‘-ah’. got tired of the hispanics im always working with giving me shit about it, so one summer introduced myself as roberto.

our teacher / coordinators name was “bob”.. thought him a cool ass old man.

 

[TheTexasRoadrunner]

Nothin special really. When I started traveling 10 years ago I didn't have a name. About 6-8 months in I went to visit my ex grandmother in law , and long story short she said I was like a Roadrunner going town to town. I liked the name and it stuck. It went to being Hobo Roadrunner then it got changed in Britt 5 years ago to the Texas Roadrunner. Aside from that since I also use a lot of Australian ways of doing things surrounding n relations to the swagmen , lately people started calling me the Texas Swagman now instead. I like both