Nothing overly fascinating here. My dog is Gwen. It’s short for Guinevere because my husband and I are both Arthurian geeks. His usual online name is Gawain/Gawaines.
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It started with Rufus, a black cat we named after the cat from Reanimator. We hadn’t named him yet when we watching the movie, so it was an obvious choice.
Spike, despite being female, was named after the character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Paul was named after a bit from The Family Guy. I turned to my wife and said, “Our next cat will be named Paul” and he was.
Duck (a tuxedo cat) was named after the cat from Constantine (though that cat was grey). This might have also been pre-planned.
Our next two cats where then pre-named to be Duck and Goose. The second Duck (also a tuxedo cat) is called Redux. Goose is a black cat we sometimes call Goofus.
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My grandmother had a cat named Bobcat, because he was born in my dad’s lap.
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I think I told this before here, but my nickname comes from a nickname of a nickname of my actual name.
I was named by my parents (they are from the mainland in Spain, from Valencia) with the two city “saint patrons” names, Jose and Vicente. But that is too long, so I was always called a shortened version at home and by everybody at school and high school: Josevi.
In University, my mates started shortening even longer, to Chevi or Xevi. Because 2 syllables is better than 3, I guess. That, with the fact that I had long brown hair and I am quite tall (1.96m or 6’5" in empire measures) , made me think that it was too easy not to change it into Chewy, like Solo’s furry best pal, Chewbacca, on my online persona. 77 was the year I was born (which happens to be the year Star Wars premiered)
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I can’t remember why exactly, but my best mate started calling me Big Nuts when we lived together. Definitely because we’re idiots, definitely because I’m fat, possibly because of my lack of success with ladies!
We were playing some computer game and out of nowhere he said, “all hail Captain Big Nuts”, so that’s what I was called for a bit.
We then played Perfect Dark on the N64 and the player name box was locked at 8 characters, hence captbnut and it’s stuck ever since.
“El Thrombong” is because a) Dylan heard somewhere about a guy having the nickname ‘thrombosis’ because he was a slow moving clot and b) I used to have a bit of an obsession with El Kabong who was the alter ego of Quick Draw McGraw who hit people with a guitar.
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I don’t know if anyone here is of Greek extraction but a couple of people I know elsewhere have told me that it’s a matter of serious family politics which grandparents you get named after and in which order.
Which may be why every Greek person I’ve met has a nickname that they chose themselves, that they use for every purpose except legal documents.
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I’ve had a few personal nicknames and online aliases over the years, but no need to go over all of those.
As adopters and carers for many feral cats, my partner and I have given many such names to our wards in the last ten years or so, often named (or similarly named) after a well known music group or cast from a movie or tv show. As such, we’ve had the Ghostbusters (Bill, Dan and Harold), the Three Stooges (Mo, Curly and Larry), ZZ Top (Billy, Dusty and Frank), Motley and Crew, Eddie and the Cruisers, Sansa and Arya, Ronnie and Reggie Kray (very aptly named, those two!), Seigfried and Roy, Ren and Stumpy, plus most of the cast of Dallas (well, my partner is from Texas). But her most elaborately named cat is her one-eyed pirate cat Captain Jackie Meowington Shaddock, commonly known as CJ.
I don’t recall any RPG character names but then again I was mostly the GM and haven’t played a proper tabletop rpg for over 30 years, but I do recall many of the great video game character names my brother and I used. Zeke Mold and Chip Fury III were used in Tiger Woods Golf, Hugh Maniac and Ivor Gattygun were our Timesplitters profiles (such cracking titles, 1 and 2 especially!), and I had a female warrior in a Japanese rpg called Miss D’Heavenly Glory. Our best names though came in rpgs like the Diablo, Elder Scrolls and Titan Quest series, where shapeshifting druid Dwanye Dribbly, pet summoner Doctor Doeslittle, nature sorceror Ellie Mental and paladin Samoly Khant waged epic campaigns, among several other comedy names that escape my memories for now. Happy times.
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A wyvern is like a dragon but it’s got 4 limbs the front 2 being wings. A dragon has 4 legs plus 2 wings. Growing up my friends would refer to the ‘wyvern voice’ for nerds who were pedantic and arrogant. So we’d do the voice and say ‘actually I think you’ll find that’s a wyvern’. So when someone in a conversation near me was pointing out the dragon symbol associated with the film Enter the Dragon was actually a wyvern I gaffawed heartily. It just so happened I was signing up to bgg next day and my traditional name of Reflector had gone a long time ago. Reflector was from a management thing of some types and I was told I was an extreme reflector with how much I thought. I don’t think I believe so much in these type definitions but I don’t take these handles very seriously and nonsense inspiration seems to be my approach. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched Enter the Dragon even.
Irl I’ve never had nicknames really. Apparently I’m not that fun a person 
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Funny enough, my older brother is named after both my grandparents. He is called Angel, like my father, my grandfather, and my great grandfather. And my uncle is also called Jose, but he has always been called “Pepe” (there different theoriies as to how that nickname is applied to so many Joses, the main one being that it come from Italian: Giuseppe, turns to Beppe, and gets turned to Pepe in Spanish and Portuguese).
My mother never really liked my uncle too much, so luckily I didn’t get to be called Pepe, phew…
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