How did you choose your iNat username?

This is absolutely how I’m going to pronounce this in my head from now on.

3 Likes

I’m bumping this great topic about how you chose your username, since we’ve got some awesome new members here! :hugs: :partying_face:

I thought they might like to read some posts, and maybe even share their stories! :microphone: :clap:

4 Likes

I didn’t really choose it, as many others… but somehow it feels right to have my real name in here and use an alias elsewhere :smile:

Here it shows more about the real me than in any professional publication or similar matter. I work in finance but my true passion has always been nature and learning about it.

iNaturalist also feels like a safe place in terms of online hazards.

6 Likes

Yeah, if there were any scammers or whatever here, the staff would kick them out! Good decision.

2 Likes

Yeah, I decided to go with my real name (first initial + last name) to sound more professional, but I’m always wondering if I should change it because people have trouble spelling my last name correctly. Also people think I’m my mom because they meet her in person at Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve and remember the name “Appelbaum”. But then see that the user lappelbaum has the most observations and species in the Watson Preserve project (I also curate the project) and think I’m her. She doesn’t use iNat nearly as much as me. Her username is calopogon.

2 Likes

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
You two really live that!

4 Likes

My username is a variation of one I’ve used elsewhere online and references the East Asian mythical creature 獬豸, as I wanted something related to Korea at the time. The standard Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters is 해태 (haetae), with 해치 (haechi/haichi/hechi) a variant of that. The extra ‘w’ at the front is a shortening from the longer version of my username and also an oblique reference to the overly aspirated [hʍ] sound that occasionally appears in spoken English.

I’ve contemplated changing my username to something that included at least my first name but am still undecided.

5 Likes

The way I got my username was in a very goofy way. On the day that I created my account, after (apparently because I guess I never picked up on it LOL!) my brother Sean or birdwhisperer on iNaturalist spent over two years trying to convince me to create an account, I finally did when we were at a pond catching bluegill. What happened that day when I chose a username started off by basing it off of chickens, because I was and still am a very happy, active chicken owner. That, however, slowly devolved into having play on words with chicken and I ended up where I am today at chickeroni, which is the result of the devolving of our final brain cells. It is a play on words between chickens and pepperoni because for some reason that I cannot remember, pepperoni was the running gag between my brother, my dad and myself that day. I could be misremembering some of the details here but if my memory serves right this is how it happened.

9 Likes

Y’know, some of my favorite conversations with The Doctor have been ones where we both end up punchy and oxygen-starved because we’re laughing so hard at the way we riff off each other.

Mine is simply using all the first names of my family and our last name to create: Gljcrsmith.

4 Likes

That’s my name, abbreviated. I use it on civilised forums of interest.
My profile photo is of a small rock formation near the Talia Caves in South Australia.

3 Likes

That a cool username!

I’m a birder in West Virginia. That’s why I made my username wvbirder.

3 Likes

Yeah. I‘ve been thinking for a while of changing my name to „Federgeistchen“ which is the German word for plume moth, but literally translates to „little feather ghost“. I think it’s one of the best common names in existence.

But I haven’t done so for the same reason as you and because I‘ve been eyekosaeder for far too long and on too many platforms to change it now. (Also, I have not the slightest expertise in that taxon)

1 Like

I imagined it as some kind of flying vermin. :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes:

I had to use my name and graduating year when I had to download iNaturalist for a class in botany. I think I needed 50 total observations and 35 had to be research grade. Looking back it’s really funny that I took a whole semester to do that when I easily do that on a weekend now. I know classes using iNaturalist can be troublesome, but I’m so happy I found this community through that class.

15 Likes

I love Weevils and ivory billed woodpeckers and WeevilWoodpecker just sounds good
My first ever online username was casoweyfishfan (I meant to spell was cassowaryfishfan but I was so excited I misspelled it and it stuck) Because I always liked fish and I recently learned about the cassowary and I thought they were really cool. I’m significantly more into birds and recently extinct species in general over fish nowadays but I still think they’re pretty cool

2 Likes

Mine is my name, but it’s still unique! I’ve never met another person with the same name I have.

7 Likes

Very cool name! I actually have two middle names.

2 Likes

Cool!

1 Like