What’s In A Name?

I was excited when I had to create an Xbox 360 gamertag. A new identity online. A chance to be someone different and unique. I had to have an unusual name. My first was “Sambuca Queen”, very random. It was a nickname given to me by an ex and some friends. But after four years of having that tag, I became bored with it. I wasn’t dating the guy who gave me the name anymore, so I wanted something that was me right now. So I chose “Plug in Baby 85”. The 85 is very easy. Have you figured it out already?

Plug in Baby; it is still one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands, Muse. Explaining that gamertag is a lot better. I don’t sound like a big alcoholic for one! The best experience I had with my gamertag was when I was playing a game of Full House Poker online. I had been in a live match for about five minutes when one of the girls starting humming the song “Plug in Baby”! I couldn’t help but giggle. Then a few more people starting humming and singing along. Before long, anyone who had heard the song in the group was singing along, I was gobsmacked. A song had managed to make a group of strangers start singing with each other and laughing. I was even told by one girl she loved me because that song brought back so many happy memories for her. I don’t usually have strangers say they love me, so I was pleased! Then I started thinking about other people’s gamertags. Some are funny, creative, random and genius.

Here are some examples of some awesome gamertags. Thanks to my amigos at Twitter for helping me out!

• Velveteenfrog: ‘velveteenfrog’ is named after a velveteen ‘bean’ frog I had growing up. I still have it!
• GirlWhoWasDeath: Mine’s GirlWhoWasDeath, inspired by a female assassin from an episode of The Prisoner from 1968 (of the same name).
• Markatanksy: My GT is a hybrid of my first name and the surname of the main character in Mad Max, which is ‘Rockatansky’. I’m a massive fan of Mad Max and one day I decided to put those two names together – found I quite liked the result. 🙂
• Chucklebuck: I saw the word ‘Chucklebuck’ in a montage in the film Ray. It probably just said ‘Hucklebuck’, but I didn’t see it properly.
• PandasaurasRex: Mine (xPandasaurasRex) is a process of animal testing gone horribly wrong!
• NuclearSock: I got “NuclearSock” from a game name generator thing I found on the Internet and I liked it, so I used it for Xbox Live.
• TEA MONSTER: My love for tea. 🙂
• Xenoliath: I was looking at cool rocks and found ‘Xenolith’. Unfortunately, that was taken, so I threw an ‘a’ in, hence ‘Xenoliath’.
• NonShinyGoose: Mine was given to me by Digitiser’s Mr. Biffo after he took the mickey out of my real name.
• KittyKat1988: Mine is my nickname with my year of creation tagged on the end.
• DezmOnd: DezmOnd came from too many Darrens at LAN parties. Darren and Daz were taken. Dez was the only option which evolved; dezmOnd
• BobTheSkutter: Same as on here, I’m a Red Dwarf fan, and it’s a geeky reference, serves me well.

It’s nice having the chance to create a new identity online and make others sit up and take notice of your name. I thought my name wasn’t very popular till I started high school and had two Laurens in my class! But I’m safe in knowing that there is only one Plug in Baby 85 and that name is staying put for a long time!