My feeling is that if you are pursuing or want to pursue a career in biology, you might want to have a username that is based on your real name. Yes, I know, there are those who don’t follow this and are active biologists; also, my age and dislike of pseudonyms is showing. But name recognition can be a plus in a professional career.
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Like I said…
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But people who know me by my original username might not be able to find me.
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Boringly just my initials, which I originally combined to single “character” to sign my drawings and paintings at school.
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Maybe put on your profile: “Formerly @so-and-so” and give identifiers and observers you know a heads-up that you’re changing your name. It’s usually easy for others to adjust
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3-character usernames are fairly rare nowadays, so it may not be as boring as you think :)
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I agree! Some people don’t feel comfortable using their full names on the internet. Being able to use a name other than your real one is also considered a more freeing/expressive option for most people.
Sometimes for this website, the term “scientific” can be pretty, well, loosely applied.
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I totally hear you! Just wanted to make clear that there isn’t a technical or normative impediment if you wanted to change your username.
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Most people are cautious… The others are recorded in my little black book!
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Most of my activity on iNat is related to my professional work (robber flies), so I wanted my name and activity to be easily understood / searchable. Since I’m probably the only person alive who can recognize some taxa, I figure my IDs will be better understood and accepted if they came from my name than from an opaque pseudonym. And I like my name.
But it has occasionally hurt. For example, I once had a posse of grade schoolers harass me (including calling my workplace) to retaliate after I’d disagreed with some of their IDs, which they could only do because my username matches my real-world life. It’s a two-edged sword.
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oof. i’ve also been harassed by middle schoolers after correcting some joke IDs, but at least they didn’t go through the trouble of finding me irl!!
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I’ve been Goth Hobbit on various online spaces for …errrm, 20-plus years now. Really, it’s less of a username and more of a description: short, sturdy, frequently barefoot*, love to garden, wear a lot of black. Siouxsie and the Banshees may be slightly overrepresented in the music library, and I’ve never met an edible mushroom that I haven’t liked. Plus, my dad got me hooked on the works of Professor Tolkien when I was all of five years old.
It’s accurate enough that the phrase has allowed someone I hadn’t met before to pick me out of an airport crowd. I’ll probably still be using it in another twenty years.
*(Yes, I’m wearing boots in my profile photo. They’re also late-1980s vintage pointy-toed Doc Martens.)
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That’s exactly what I imagined your user name meant!
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My nickname was intended to be Petzenbär. Bär in an animal, you can guess the English form. In Slovenian language they are called “medved” But I thought thät the the letter “ä” would not be possible at an American-based English language website. So I changed the spelling into “…beer” from Beere/berry. The Petzen is an interesting mountain, situated in Austrai (Kärnten) as well as in Slowenia.
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It seemed like everyone was using the word “quantum”.
Usually incorrectly.
“Quantum proportions”, that kind of thing.
I have the personality of a cat, so I decided to use “quantum” in a way that could be interpreted as something opposite to what I actually meant. I feel like something went wrong when I was changing from being a blob of cells into a child. A mistake in the blueprint. A very small mistake. Almost, but not quite immeasurably small… but still effecting my entire existence.
It’s hilarious (to me).
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I raise and keep praying mantises.
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As soon as I noticed your post in another thread earlier today, I was curious about the background of your user name - and hey presto! Already delivered 
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Welcome to the forum!
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I signed up using google and so it was automatic, I had no idea what I was really doing or what sort of interactions took place on iNat. I’m not even sure I realised I’d created a username. It doesn’t bother me, it has some advantages, and I’ve never really thought about changing it. One odd consequence is that iNatters are now the only people other than my mother who often refer to me as ‘Matthew’, rather than ‘Matt’! (When she’s not calling me my siblings’ names, that is!)
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some username i’ve been using since like 2020. inspired by Karyorelicteans, some interesting ciliate i quite like
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