Hi folks,

As some of you may have noticed I've changed my user name from Castor to Aberdeenastro. When I first subscribed to UMSF I decided that I would prefer to maintain some level of anonymity and tried to think of an appropriate user name. I chose Castor as it's the brightest star in my zodiac constellation (Gemini) - not that I believe in astrology!

However, many people might be confused by this name and what it is supposed to represent. And here's the warning to us all: according to Answers.com one definition of the word castor is "An oily, brown, odorous substance obtained from glands in the groin of the beaver and used as a perfume fixative"!

Hence the change to Aberdeenastro. I'd much rather be associated with Aberdeen Astronomy than the substance that comes from glands in a beaver's groin!

I'd be interested to know how some of you chose your user names.

Cheers,

Aberdeenastro

I followed the djellison format.

A little knowledge of Welsh should help decipher my username... though it only tells you where I am, not who I am.

Would it begin with G?

Though I usually use another nick I wanted to choose a different one for the MER mission and other space exploration stuff and that ustrax word was ringing in my head since I faced it in Eco's 'Name of the Rose', it means fire and for me it represents a compromise between past and future...

Indeed it would; in English at least!

My name actually is for two reasons, but I'll only give the first one on this forum:

On 01/01/1801, the first asteroid was discovered (Ceres). As you know, a rogue asteroid or comet could hit the earth (ie a "black angel" from above) and destroy all life on the earth. Such a thing killed all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago!

Update: For a few days in August 2006, reason #1 was invalid. However, in a clear vote, reason #1 regained its validity.

I as a child loved dinosaurs and reading books on asteroids and comets. when I found out they are both linked, I connected them and there is 50% of my username!

Mine is simply my initials and FL for Florida, where I currently reside.

Michael.

Mine's a quite silly thing a friend called me. My real first name being Patrick might make it make a tiny bit of sense.

Nothing else then my surname.

---
Eduardo Tesheiner

Mine was the coolest one not already taken when I signed up.

I'm just here to give my two cents worth.

...and here I was thinking all along that you named yourself after one of the wheels on your bed

Back in the early days of AOL I used CireN, which is my first name Eric backwards with the 'first initial' of my last name backwards (Petersen). For a brief month I had cancelled my AOL service and when I signed up again I couldn't use CireN again. While signing up I had to 'come up' with something and was pressed for time.
I've always had a liking of the middle star of the handle of the Big Dipper, Mizar. It's a beautiful double star to the eye (with Alcor) and in a modest telescope is a 'double-double'. Anyway, I tried to use Mizar but AOL wanted more characters and assigned some random numbers on the end. I didn't like that, so I sat there thinking of what to use with Mizar and for some reason the word 'Key' popped into my head. So, MizarKey was born. The 'Key' stands for 'that which unlocks the doors of knowledge'. I've been MizarKey for 10 years now. Whew.

Many years ago I started working for a small company of 9 people. Since there was already a "Dave" there, they started referring to me as the "O-Dave" (since O'Toole is my surname). The name stuck, and I've been using it ever since.

My name is Lyford.

Hey you moved. Where's Carlbad? anywhere near Oceanide?

Harder was my nickname some time ago. I kept it on the shelf to use as the name for my first fishing boat - "Harder" has several meanings in Dutch language one of them the name of a saltwaterfish.
But UMSF came up first...

I'm not even loosely related to Bruce Willis

That's the one!

It's my name!

As someone already argued, I used the beginning of my surname... De facto, this abbreviation is also my nickname in my workplace.
Anyway, I never had a great fantasy in this field!

Since my name is Doug Van Dorn, I figured dvandorn was, well, appropriate...

As for my sign-off, well -- I had originally planned on signing my posts simply, like this:

-Doug

However, after my first post, as I read through the forum (which was, at that point, the old rlproject site), I saw that our Glorious Leader signed his posts almost identically. So, I figured, it was a little more appropriate (and perhaps a touch humorous) to sign myself, as I shall always be here,

-the other Doug

Mine has evolved.

I started out sometime before the turn of the century as "MeThePichu," "Pichu" being a Pokemon. A while later I wanted something new, but still connected to the original name. So, I went with "UltraMTP3000." Everyone called me "um3k," which I started using for its simplicity. Thus, I am now um3k. This all happened before I became interested in space.

I have always used this userid for all thing! except some places which raised userid duplicity.

Rodolfo Neuhaus