As you may know, I'm not very happy with my current username. Until recently, I had resigned myself to being "pat4327" for perpetuity. But, a few weeks ago, Whiskey Media began allowing users a one-time name change. I'd like to change my username to my real name (Patrick Van Brunt) or some permutation thereof. The catch is, I want to have the same username across every site I use, so the name needs to be available on WM, Twitter, and Xbox Live. I've already tried "PatVB" and "PatrickVB" but some jerks already have those Twitter handles. I've considered just using my full name, but I'm concerned that it's too long for anyone to remember. Do any of you guys have suggestions for a good username I can use?
I put this up on Screened a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed reading everyone's responses. So I figured I'd put it up on all the WM sites and see what everyone has to say.
As you may have noticed, I have a really, really stupid username. The first three letters of my name followed by four entirely random numbers do not an interesting handle make. With your indulgence, I'd like to explain myself:
It all started years ago when I was first signing up for Xbox Live. I was super excited to get home from Best Buy (after purchasing my proprietary Xbox-brand wireless adapter) and start playing Halo 2. Having a terrible wireless network at home, in addition to me not knowing how to do these kinds of things at the time, meant that I spent the the better part of the afternoon setting up the connection and making my account.
When I finally got to the part where they wanted me to come up with a name, I was pretty impatient with the process and just wanted to get on with murdering some blues/reds. I had thought of (what I thought at the time was) a really clever Gamertag. Of course it, and all variations I could come up with were already taken. So I tried my name, which was also obviously taken. Finally, out of frustration, I added the first four numbers that came to mind to the first three letters of my first name.
My plan was to keep this temporary name for a few days until I could think of a clever name that wasn't taken yet. A week later, when I had finally thought of one, I went to the Xbox dashboard, punched in the name, and discovered that Microsoft charged $5 to change your Gamertag. So I said "eff this ess", kept the crappy name, and the rest is history. Pat4327 history.
Long story short, I have a dumb username because I'm a cheapskate. What's the origin story behind your name?
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