So, I was going through lists of members on various sites, and I got to wondering how and why people chose their fandom aliases.  Are they related to the person's real name?  Favorite character?  Do they have a funny story?  Were all the good names already taken? :-P

Here's mine: "Immortal Beloved" is the name of a 1994 movie about Beethoven.  I love Beethoven.  Beethoven's music is passionate and tumultuous, Spike and Buffy's relationship is passionate and tumultuous...and Spike's immortal :)  

Anyway, what's the story behind your nickname?

Mine actually has nothing at all to do with BtVS or Spuffy.  I started writing fanfic for the X-Men fandom.  My favorite characters (and 'ship) are Rogue and Gambit.  For those of you not familiar, Gambit is from New Orleans and has a heavy Cajun accent, often mixing in French with his speech.  "Coquine," is the feminine of the French word 'coquin,' which means 'rogue.'  If you're curious, it's supposed to be pronounced 'co-keen.'  I was pretty proud of myself at the time for coming up with it, and once I switched fandoms I just stuck with it.  Wasn't that fascinating?!  *g*

I loved that movie as well, though it's been a loooong time since I've last seen it. Maybe 96-ish. Anywho, how did I come up with Golden Buffy? Well, way before I knew about fanfic and started writing to share with other people I was into the pc game the sims. *cough* *cough* It's still my second addiction next to Spuffy. And one day I just happen to do a search on google for sim stuff other than the offical site and I found some fan sites. I needed a user name to join certain chat forums and I came up with Golden Buffy, since I loved the show and it was still on the air at that time. Buffy being for the slayer, and golden since her hair was blonde, lol. And when I started writing fanfic I just thought the name was perfect, lol. And look, there aren't any other Golden Buffy's, lol.

I'm still a shipper for them. And Gambit was the first comic guy that I've ever and still do find HOT, lol.

Well, mine's not from Buffy... duh. Back in high school, I needed a new AIM screenname to avoid a stalkery ex-boyfriend, and I liked Eowyn from Lord of the Rings (this was before the movies came out and it became a whole big thing... I like to think I was ahead of the trend). And 3-15 is my birthday. I like to keep a consistent identity, so that's been my alias in various fandoms ever since then. I thought about changing it to fit the Buffy fandom, but my AIM screenname and my email address match it, and I can't be bothered to change everything...

Mine's not BtVS related either.

I'm a little bit of a Bon Jovi fan, lol, and Always is one of my favourite songs and of course jbj = Jon Bon Jovi.

I got my name from a character in the series The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike. The character's name was Yaksha, but his name was already taken. So I came up with Yashka instead. This was years ago and I just never felt the need to change it.

Mine is part of the English translation of  my Cheyenne name...

It was either Shadow... or Honehe....

Honehe Maahtasooma  (Shadow of the Wolf)

 I'm a little bit of a Bon Jovi fan, lol   A little bit???? LOL 

I got mine several years ago when I decided that I needed a pen name - people were always confusing me with Pattyanne, plus, I have the whole secret identity thing going...So, anyway, I mentioned it on the tag and asked for suggestions. I settled on one from Spikeslovebite - so, Tam actually gave me my name.

  A little bit???? LOL 

Well, that was why I added the lol... and I'm not AS bad as some people I know...at least I haven't spent many thousands of dollars following them around the world... I only follow them around the country...and as they don't come to Australia very often that doesn't add up to that much! lol  So...yeah, little bit! *grin*

GoldenBuffy- Yeah, I still ship for them, too, though I haven't read the comics for years.  I checked them out a couple of months ago, and am so discouraged by what I did see that I don't know if I'll ever pick it back up.  Gambit is a freakin' Horseman of Apocalypse, for crying out loud!!  *grumbles*  Just as well.  Buying 3-4 comic books every month is actually quite expensive says the girl who has spent hundreds of dollars on the Buffy DVD sets.

WHAT? Why in the world did they do that to him? Oh well, someone told me a few years ago that Rogue was married to Magneto and they had I think two kids together, then something about killing her off. Not sure how true that was though.

Why?  Couldn't tell ya.  I just know when I saw it I think I may have damaged the merchandise of my local comic shop when I not-so-nicely shoved the issue back on the racks.  As far as Rogue and Magneto, they might have been  referring to the Age of Apocalypse, an alternate reality that was the result of Professor X being killed in the past before he could create the X-Men...*puts down geek flag.*  Yeah.  Anyways, they were together and had a son in that universe.  But it all got put back the way it was supposed to.

*points to above posts*  Sorry for that hijacking there, guys.  Feel free to continue to tell us how you got your pennames!  *hides*

"Caro Mio" means 'dear one of mine' in Italian, addressed to a male. It's from a classical song that I worked on in my voice lessons in college. I'd sung the English version before that in high school. The first verse goes: "Dear love of mine, canst thou divine How far from thee my heart is torn?" It's a love letter from a wife or lover to her man that's at war or out to sea, and she misses him terribly and can't wait for him to come back to her.

It was the first thing that came to mind when I needed a penname for myself when I decided to start posting my stories.

Wow, my name is pretty boring compared to the rest of yours. I chose Unbridled Brunette when I was signing up for a horse riders' forum some years ago. Unbridled was not only because of the horse element, but also because I have kind of a wild nature, and Brunette ... well, for obvious reasons. I liked the name so well it's followed me ever since. :D

Zombiegirl is not my penname, because I don't write fanfic. I just love too read all your wounderful stories on this site. Any way this how I got my name I have always been a horror fan. I started reading H. P. Lovecraft and Brian Lumley when I was nine. I all so saw the original Teaxs Chainsaw Massacre when I was ten. But my favorite kind of horror is zombie books or movies. When I got my gmail account I had to be zombiegirl. So I always call my self zombiegirl when I review a story or chat.

In my eighth grade literature class, I read the story The Scarlet Ibis and loved it so much, that I made it my email addy (which I still have today).  And when I started writing fan fic, well, I just kept it.  Ms. Scarlet, Scarlet, Scarlet Ibis... it's all good ;)

This is my second nick - I'm still using the previous one, which was 'very black cat', but one day I felt I've grown up from it and I decided to change my alias. 'Cereza' means in Spanish 'cherry' - and since Spanish is my new (well, not so new now) hobby I wanted to mark it somehow. I looked through the dictionary in search of  a  nice sounding and original noun (I really hate adding e.g. number to my nicks). 'Cherry' for perfect. And because it's just a cherry I'm not writing it with a capital 'c'.

Mine is just a happy accident.  I chose my e-mail address years ago, because I thought it was cool, and I knew it would be remembered.  My first name is a variation of "Winifred".  So, when my fave Buffyverse character referred to Fred as a "Fetching Mad Scientist" a fanfic author was born!

My family have called my Gilly or Gill for years.  The name Gillypod was only used by my mother, and I thought it would be a fantastic tribute to my wonderful gypsy mum.  She loved us all with a passion, protected us from harm, and taught us all to communicate with the spirits on other planes.  I was her angel, and now she is mine.

Well my penname is Daniel Nieves. I use it because it's the name of an OC for my first fanfic. That and my middle name is Daniel and my best friend of 15 years' last name is Nieves.

Gillypod, that was so beautiful.  I think I'm gonna cry :(

Thank you IB.  She was a wonderful woman and she still watches over me from time to time. 

Whoops - forgot to sign in before I replied.  Sorry about that.  The last post was from me.

My mom and dad used to call me Insi, as a nickname for Ine.
So I just modified it a little, to Inzey, and used on the groups where I signed up.
I liked it, and have used it since.

No exciting story behind mine.  When I first went online way before Buffy got out of grammar school I needed a sign on name.  Having the mental storage of a gnat I decided to have just one no matter where I went online.  My last name is Pfeiffer...that part was easy.  We have several dogs (my fur babies) and thus the "pack".  And thus was born Pfeifferpack.

My website name Anam Macalla has a better story.  I am Irish American and was raised with a deep love of the "old sod" (NO, I don't mean Liam/Angel) and the culture, music, etc.   I took "conversational Gaelic" a few years ago and love the sound of the language.  The words Anam Macalla mean Soul Echo.  I always thought that William's soul still resonated in Spike even before he was resouled...sort of an echo of who he once was, thus the name for the fic site. 

Kathleen

It's fairly simple with mine: my name is Montana, Monty for short. :-)

My nickname has actually nothing to do with BtVS. I really like to paint...and so I needed a pseudonym. It was "Moi" at first, but I met another hobby artist with the same abbriviation or alias. So I changed it to MOa...the small "a" because it looks so beautiful when it is carved into the wet paint...kind of strange...but i love it!

Makes it kind of special...because of lot of people just sign their works with their real name, which is most of the time rather long and sometimes covers a lot of the canvas.

I jusat like it! :-)

MOa from Germany

my id, is part my intials and then Spike, I have always done the smlc in various forms, my email has _ between the smlc, pogo has numbers behind smlc. When I went for a id, so the Buffy and Spike boards I decided to add Spike behind it, so there you have it smlcspike.

JoJoBird comes from the Dodo an extinct flightless bird. Im extinct and flightless and quite happy so :P

Oh and my name is Johanna

   My name actually came from my best friend of the 8th grade.  At the time I had been pulled out of school the year before, and started the homeschooling.  We were moving around constantly, so I would disappear for months at a time, and then call her up out of nowhere and we would see each other for a few days before repeating the proccess all over again.

She wrote a poem about me.  I don't remember much of the poem, but I think it went: 

Child of Twilight

Always dancing just outside the light

That's all I remember.  Of course, it could have been 'wandering just outside the light', I'm not sure.  Anyway, that's where TwilightChild came from.  I also use TwilightsChild and TwilightChild999.

It is assumed by many that 'Dead Man Walking' comes from Willow saying '... dead men walking'. But no. It has nothing to do with BtVS, it's just a happy concidence. In the early stages of my high school career (8th) my teachers thought I was a stoner and frequently wrote on my school cards something along the lines of "... while she does do her work dilligently, she does it with less expression then a dead man walking."