Have you ever felt insecure about your choice of username?
4 years ago
New Jersey, USA

My username is kind of weird, but I've had this username (and longer variations of it in the past) for so long that it had stuck. But it's hard to shake the feeling of insecurity of how dumb it sounds when you say it. I think the feeling came about when I went to GDQ and PACE, and while no one outright made fun of it (with one minor exception), hearing it come out of other people's mouths gave me uneasy vibes.

Should I even worry about changing it? Most usernames are strange and almost meaningless anyway, right? I was just wondering if anyone has felt the same about their usernames before.

I used to change my username on Steam all the time, sometimes several times a day, because I didn't find any name I actually liked. Until I got stuck with my current name: Laika. (She was the first living being to orbit the earth, launched into space by the Soviet Union.) I really like this name and will keep it. If you are unhappy with your username you could try other names until you find one that you really like. You have no obligation to stick to a name you don't like. On this forum you can't change your username all the time so if you want to experiment with other names you should probably try it on other platforms without restrictions on changing your username. And if you find one you actually like you can change it here as well.

Pear, Hako, and SuperKiwiTawa like this
Netherlands

My previous username was HKboy, which was a runescape name from another guy which account I "colonized" after my own account "Riekelt" was taken. But afterwards I wanted to switch back to Riekelt, as it's relatively unique, and it's my IRL name and I hated the suffix boy. But no, never felt insecure about a name I carry with pride. Even if I expect everyone to butcher the pronounciation who isn't Dutch by nature

Pear, Quivico and 2 others like this
Aquitaine, France

I went with "Kaweed" a while ago, it didn't make any sense but I thought it looked good, then I got "KaweedFul" when I created my youtube channel. Since then I've been keeping it, even if now I don't really like the "weed" part, because it has nothing to do with actual weed and I don't even smoke lol. But I got used to it, and with all the Twitch streamers I'm watching saying it or calling me out, it's really mine now and all I have to do is accept it! I even got a Spotify Artist page under the name "Kaweedy", so now I'm fully committed!

A username isn't definitive, many people like to change. If you don't like the sound of yours when people say it, you can change! The most important is how YOU feel about it. But if that can make you feel better, I think Tower is a good username, I don't know anybody like famous or whatever having it, so it's kinda unique.

And you're right about usernames being weird and meaningless! I like to classify them in 2 categories, the ones that are real words, like basically the 4 posts above mine (Riekelt being his IRL name so it counts as a real word), and the ones that don't mean anything, like KaweedFul, like it litteraly makes no sense. It's just cool to know which of these categories you want to be in and then go with it. And once again, the most important is that YOU feel good about it ;)

Pear, SuperKiwiTawa and 2 others like this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

nuh

WeaponLord likes this
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

My username used to be SpeedySpiderSponge. I cringe each time I think about it.

Pear and KaweedFul like this
Texas, USA

I love this breed of dog, so I am very comfortable with my username. I used it everywhere.

Pear and Laika_the_Spacedog like this
Scotland

My old user name was just my name combined with my last name I changed it for this kind of stuff and much prefer it :) I love melons so im happy with it. If you are not happy with your name you could always change it :)

Pear, WeaponLord and 2 others like this

I dunno because I don't know how people see my username in reality lol

Sweden

Never felt insecure about my username. No regrets. ツ

Finland

my older name was horrible then i changed to Silent Onion but usernames cant have spaces and i didnt like how the name looked with out a space so i shortened it to SioN (first two letters from both words) but SioN was either too short or already taken so i made it SioNis510n but then one day a finnish guy asked if im a "sionisti" (translate if you want to know) obviously joking so then i started using SioNisti everywhere instead of SioNis510N because it looked better some time later on platforms where i still used SioNis510N i changed it to SioN_510N

also originally had my username for this site as SioNisti but then found out SioN wasnt taken so i took it

Kentucky, USA

Of course not. I like the fact that I'm young but are still able to hold fruitful conversations of people with many different ages without feeling patronized.