There was a custom on the internet at one point where someone would often use the same handle everywhere. Not on mailing lists necessarily — so many university emails, so many real names — but I think somewhere around the forum era, the structure necessitated the same name to be recognised at all; you would have one community per domain name with its own isolated database, its own history, its own sense of ‘place.’
Granted, that continued in a more extreme sense on Reddit if only because it was a metaforum, and while you could make other accounts, it was a hassle to consider that unless you had a client specifically geared toward juggling them. So you were likely to be recognised across spaces.
None of this applied to imageboards where taking a name was a faux pas; and this became a bit more complicated when you had a Tumblr with a username that almost certainly wasn’t Barbux24 or Gainaxxx. You had to name a space, not an author; a tumblog read often like a codephrase. in-the-other-wander or something like that.
I’m rambling, though. I guess the underlying motivation across our times has been: Do you want to be recognised? Do you want to be found?
I’ve had a hard time thinking of handles since, well, 2011. I was only a real name person for quite a while. When I took a handle again — maru — it was just making my name shortened in Japanese, マチルデ.1 But that’s an extremely common handle; that’s just the word circle. Nothing else really made it work any better.
kotomaru: well, that’sword circle, which is unclear, but maybe cute.hanamaru:flower circleorwell done!orhigh score!if you say it at an arcade.
But do I want to be found? Or do I want to be anonymous? Or do I want to be anyone at all?
I really like when I look at a post from 2009 on a long-standing forum, see a moderator having been there since 2011 and their handle is readily identifiable across everything they have. I like seeing permanent identifiers. I like the idea of someone having a stable identity because I feel so in flux. I change nicknames and handles per-Discord server,2 on the fediverse, by space, I have so many names. I often just fall back to my actual one because it feels … at least somewhat more identifiable. I haven’t met any other people with my name. I jealously guard that fact, even though it’s not an uncommon name either. It’s just a weird spelling in an inappropriate continent for it.
Footnotes
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Okay, so, when I actually went to Japan and asked about name abbreviations in a bar, I was told that まち (
machior, lol,townin EN) is probably the more common abbreviation for my name, but there was nothing necessarily wrong with まる. It’s just that it’s a very common abbreviation and some names end that way anyway. ↩ -
Discord too has its own naming culture; if you have Nitro and can set a name per-server it’s very common to just make your name an in-joke and have a set of informal nicknames people call you from back in the day. ↩