> I know there was a thread titled "Handles" about a year ago that concerned this topic; I just read that thread and found it very interesting. However, there were only a few folks who posted to that thread who are still current regulars today (Issachar, Howard, Darien among them). I am curious about where people's nicknames come from.

I just told this in chat, and thought I'd add it to this thread.

My nickname came about like this:

Eons ago, I had an Amiga 500 computer. My nickname back then was "Mad Amigo". This was before the Internet, and I didn't have a modem or anything, so I used it mainly in high score lists and such. The good thing about it, was that it was 8 characters long (without the space), an often used maximum length in those lists.

But then I got rid of the Amiga and got myself a PC, so I felt I had to change. Besides, as I got older, "Mad Amigo" felt kinda goofy.

I wrote a short story in college once which had a character named John in it. John was the thoughts and feelings of the main character, Jon ("John" in a more Norwegian version), personalized. John walked around in the landscape of Jon's feelings. If Jon was depressed, John ventured into the Forest of Depresson and so on. I liked this story and the concept of it very much, so for a long time, my own thoughts and feelings were personalized by John. (It's not very unlike my real name, either.)

When I thought about a new nickname, I wanted it also to function as a pseudonym. I still wanted an 8 character nickname, though. I thought about "John", and thought "Travolta". But I wanted a Norwegian sounding name, and mixed "Travolta" with "Treholt". Arne Treholt was a man who was arrested for spying for the KGB many years ago. Big case in Norway.

Mind you, I have no preference for neither of these men nor what they stand for--on the contrary. But I'm a guy who likes to be ironic where people have all possibilities to not get it.

So, the full alias is "John Travholt". The nice thing about "Travholt" is that it sounds like a normal, Norwegian name, but there isn't anybody with that name in existence, so it's totally unique--at least in this country.

Now you know.


Trav"If I write a book some day, it might be under this alias. :-)"holt.