You can tell that there are less usernames to use due to how many names have numbers after them and they are not always dates. Mine is rather unique and can be used over many forums if I desired. Some usernames do put me off in wanting to communicate with others, you have to be careful as a child could playing the game behind that avatar. Folk who like to be loud and obnoxious in area chat definitely annoy me sometimes and that puts me off wanting to connect to anyone.

For Elder Scrolls games I try to keep within lore in ways of names but not always due to only being able to play one of them thoroughly. I sometimes make joke names like my recent Argonian characters, Kwama Chameleon and Ig-Kwama.

I love the 2 comments that are on the article, at the buttom of the page lol

What they forget to mention in the article, is the fact that young people often live less established lives, so they have tendency to be more aggressive and care more about immersion than mature people, who have kids and a steady job on their minds. The younger crowd is less worn out, when they log in to play, and they have much less concerns on their minds.
The "antisocial names" as they call them in the article, is in reality a "social name" ...it's more provocative, so it attracts attention - wether people think it is fun or get offended, it brings the person who is using the name more conversation and communication than if they had a random nondescript name.

None of the things mentioned in the article surprised me in any way. Pretty obvious I find.

Not terribly surprising at all. I've said for years that what you see people behave like on the internet is their truest selves, the way they WOULD behave in real life if only they could get away with it. Which is a little terrifying frankly because the evidence of widespread narcissism and siocipathy one sees in gaming communities is truly troubling.

Of course what they don't tell you is that what people choose to call themselves online is also a pretty good indicator of their IQ. And THAT is really scary.

Meanma wrote: »

People always pronounce my name as mean-ma and think I'm a badass fourty-something who screams at idiots over Teamspeak while her kids are at school. I'm a twenty-something sheepish girl who can't raise her voice to save her life and it's an Irish word meaning spirit.

Dang.. where I come from Mi-Mah ( pronounced about the same as mean-ma) is how I call my grandma.. hahahahaa

Mine is pretty obvious for an ESO-Fan. I liked the name, I loved the lore, and I thought the nickname "Uvi" suits me.
So I´ve been called Uvi for 15 years now. Depending on who is with me in Real Life it has even replaced my real name
The name is kind of my calling card. All my character`s names begin with Uvi. Be it Uvirith, Uviryth, Uviroth, Uvirean etc.p.p.

Bait article it was more about age than actually deciphering what people's gaming names say about them, the most in depth section that entire article covered about extracting some meaning from a gamer's name is the fact that " the probability that the last 2 numbers at the back of a player's name correlate to their age is quite high "

Wow... such an eye opener.

I would clasify that as a clickbait.

Although OP your topic has sparked interest into the subject for me so let's all discuss this:

Here's my 2 cents, personally I just want a badass name that is unique ( I don't want no fancy numbers instead of letters, when I do use them ( like in the case with my League of Legends acc ) it's because someone has already taken my name, I assume this is the case for many people.

For years my Steam name was Sypher, then Carnage for just over 8 years ( do you guys have any idea how many people used Carnage in the last 3 years? too many )

It was a nightmare having people add me.

So back to the topic at hand:

I think people's names can say quite a lot about them, even character names.

Take the following example:

Poops in Shoes for an Argonian ( while this migh sound lore friendly it's actually a troll name and a mockery of the lore ) Thus probably a teenager to young 20-year old's character name.

Where as Zash'do for a Khajiit is actually lore friendly

ect. Then you get people who name their characters their names i.e. Fengrush, Sypher, Duiwel ect.

You also get people who name their characters real names such as Michael, Samantha, Ariella ect.

Some people use a combination of real names and fantasy names : Aragorn the Nimble

David the Frostgiant ect.

You get some really creative people out there.

Notice I have not added anything about age or personality simple because it's hard to classify someone based on so little information.

Did the person loose a bet and had to name their char that? Where they drunk? Perhaps bored? It could even be that they were fed up because the first 10 names they came up with were taken and they are lazy?

I have people who named their alts : "Alchemy Mule 1" "Blacksmith Mule 3"

I could never! It would be blasphemy

I could go on but then most people would TLDR

My name reveals that I take a round about way of talking circles around people in a circular argument, just to get a donut.

I've had some interesting interpretations for this name over the years. Most people correctly guess that I'm female (although it's not uncommon for people to assume I'm male), many people guess that I like cats which is correct but not relevant and some people have told me it sounds French which I don't understand.

The real story is fairly simple. I needed a name for a forum, I was very into role-playing and my main character was (and still is) called Danielle, but I'd be posting as myself as well so I combined it with Katy which is my real name, liked the result and just over 15 years later I'm still using it. Somewhat surprisingly given how common it is if you google it I rarely come across sites where it's already taken.

Still it's better than the name I use on music forums. I wanted something that was just about me, got bored with thinking about it and signed up as Just_Me. By the time I got sick of it I knew too many people under that name to change it so I still go by it now. (With one or two exceptions where I use Just_Me (Katy) out of somewhat tongue in cheek deference to a particular musician with an, IMO hypocritical, objection to screen names.)

My character names are usually some combination of words I associate with the character (translated into other languages if I don't think English works, Welsh or Latin usually) and game lore. I'm not strict about sticking exactly to the lore, but I like it to look reasonably close. (For example my male Imperial's first name is Sagittam which is wrong because it's a female word, but most people wouldn't know that so I think it's ok.)

There is only one AlienSlof. No matter where I go, I am always AlienSlof. No numbers. No x's. No weird symbols. The Alien part is because I'm a huge Giger's Alien fan. The Slof part is a corruption of Sloth (the slow cute-faced creature which hangs upside down in trees) due to my job - I was a signwriter and thus moved along the sign quite slowly. I've been 'Slof' for more than 30 years and most people call me that both online and off.

It seemed to me, back in my Quake days, that people with numbers in their names 'l1k3 th15' were often either kids or trolls. To this day, I still hate numbers in nicknames and am wary of their owners. I try not to generalise, but my experiences definitely coloured my view.

I made my account when i was very young. When i got older the name just kind of stuck with me and i've kept it.