I recently saw this thread, and saw many interesting ways people’s usernames came about. So I ask: how did you choose your iNat username? Does it include the name of a taxon you like? Is it a pseudonym? Maybe your username has a fascinating backstory? And while I’m at it, what do you think makes a good or bad username on iNat?
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L.J., thank you so much for making this post! 
When I clicked on your link about
Prohibit Curators from Changing Username
I was surprised to discover the option to change my username!
I originally chose “awarg” as a shorthand for my name — Adam WARGon — in order to avoid too much typing while logging into iNaturalist. I also used “awarg” here on the iNat Forum.
However, I’ve since found that I mostly stay logged in, and I’ve grown to regret the cryptic username!
Thanks to your post, I was surprised and delighted to find out how easy it is to update my username!
I’ve just changed my username on both iNaturalist and here on the iNat Forum, so now it is my actual name.
I’m grateful to you for this discovery! 
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It’s a Girl Scout “camp name”. My daughter “Stormy” gave it to me, as storms do come from aThunderhead. And my head does get thunderous from time to time.
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dgw are my initials, and I do things :)
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Mine is a rebus for my initials, TLB; which I used for my first email account. Back in the day, iSPs regularly disappeared requiring us to establish new accounts elsewhere. Each time I needed a new id, my preferred initials were already taken of course. So I just kept adding letters that preserved the phonics. The next one would have added a ‘b’, teellbbee. Thankfully, isp stabilized and I did not get there. It’s an (edit: fixed spellcheck) awkward username.
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For some reason, my username is seldom already in use when I create a new account.
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I never chose my username. When I (apparently) created my account, I didn’t know that was what I was doing. I thought I was signing up for something else. I don’t remember the process now, but somehow my user name was created for me from my name. Whatever the process was it must be a common story because I see other user names that are made up the same way - including some that I know were created at the same time as mine in the same session I attended.
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My old name was my first name spelled backwards with my “favorite number”. When I was younger I worried that everyone asked about favorite animals and colors and such. I was worried because I never decided my favorite number and if I had to pick one on the spot I might pick a bad one. So I spent about a week agonizing about it. I was a very anxious child.
Now I just use my first name and my initials
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mine is my name, I did it to show me and promote visibility, as I do other things, want to be able to be searched, im pretty boring, apologize
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It’s a name I’ve used elsewhere for writing and such.
I picked it because I’ve always been a fan of mythology, legends, and fantasy, and because I work in environmental conservation. Also, when I was little and first read Dune my favorite character was Liet-Kynes, the Imperial Planetologist, mainly because that sounded like a really cool job.
Given the state of affairs globally I feel that the planet, ecosystems, and species need champions, and I like the big picture approach. Planetologist isn’t really a job option at the moment, so I chose a username that kinda captures a bit of that, plus some of my other interests.
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I just went with my name.
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Right after I got my graduate degree, I taught biology at a community college, and I was given an email with my full first and last name (Samuel Kieschnick)… I noticed that none of the students could remember how to spell it… Sooo, I created a gmail address with “sambiology” to help students contact me. Now that I’m an urban wildlife biologist, I’ve just stuck with it. :)
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I joined iNaturalist as a requirement for a high school ecology class, and the naming convention we used was “first name last initial - [school initials}”. When I graduated high school I dropped the school initials.
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If you use a third party to create an iNat account (like Google or Apple), a username is automatically generated for you by iNat, based on the information it gets from that third party. So I think for me it would probably be “tonyiwane”. If there was an existing “tonyiwane” iNat username, then iNat would add some digits to the end to make it unique.
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The Plain-tailed Hanging Thief (Diogmites neoternatus) got me interested in entomology when I was in High School. I didn’t know its name at the time, and it took hours for me to find out what it was (this was before I had Inat). It led me to learn about other insects that I never knew existed and it snowballed into my current passion for entomology.
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Z is the initial of my first name, and also a nick name a very close friend gave me. A lot of the variations I tried didn’t work, and I ended up landing on this…
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Thanks, Tony, that explains it. Whatever process we followed at that workshop session I was in, we must have used Google to create the accounts.
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My username is a pseudonym I sometimes use but is also my cat’s name. I also wanted to include my (numerous!) other pets as they help with finding a surprising number of my observations, hence Kjerstiandco
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A good username has no punctuation:) so its easier to find the characters. And remember them when trying to “mention” somebody. On my tablet I have to go to a 2nd page of keyboard characters, which means 3 more clicks for the underscore or hyphen, and lots more if I forget which it is.
Obviously I did not know this when I joined iNat. I was also very nervous about going on a public platform. I had used Newsgroups and then later some technical Internet Forums (music making software).
But here I was going to be not only learning plants but sharing my observations and inevitable feelings and assessments of my local environment.
Kaipatiki Stream is my local stream, and I still have not learned all there is to learn about the forest succession around it.
But there are, in recent years, numerous real-life groups using Kaipatiki as part of their real-life name, and one or two of them, environmental groups, use iNat.
Before iNat was iNat it was called “NatureWatch”, so I made my username as impersonal as possible, I hoped, by being just another Naturewatcher, one focused on Kaipatiki area.
Its a blessed nuisance to type, but at least I can remember it. Except I have to remember there is not room for the last letter in the Forum !
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My favorite video game has a fictional political party called “the hawk party”, and since I identify mostly hawks, it just felt right haha
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