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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

Years ago, a friend sent me a brochure for a pagan convention, and I started snickering at the names of some of the workshop leaders. Said to my friend, you know, someone should make a pagan name generator, akin to the porn-star/mobster/etc. name generators that I've seen on the internet--all you need to do is throw in the signs of the zodiac, a few metals and crystals, some constellations, the four elements, and a few friendly forest animals, and voila.

So then of course I went looking, and a few such generators did in fact already exist. I played for a while on a few of them and got silly names like "Sprite Craft Bran." Then I spotted one called "Old Polish Pagan Name Generator." I'm half Polish, so I figured, why not, and headed there and plugged in my name.

Then my hair stood on end.

The name it gave me, first try, was "dlugo czaj," which was translated as "long wait."*

I had been single and disappointed for about three years at that point, so this name was particularly poignant. I started using it as an alias (and kept doing so for the two years that followed until I finally began a relationship with my now-spouse). I still find it somewhat resonant (although I've also struggled for years over how to say it, settling finally on "dwoogo chy"), so I've kept it.

*Someone on metafilter informed me not long ago that it translates as "long tea." She's the ONLY person** who's ever come close to recognizing it, so she may well be right. Teaches me to believe in something I find on the internet--but I'm still half-assedly sticking to my story, because it's a good story, dammit.

** Got a great memail from hat_eater:
I noticed your curious nick and I couldn't resist checking out your profile. Your guess at the pronunciation is correct, and "czaj" really means "tea"... but in Russian.
In Polish, the word "czaj" is widely understood (as Russian) but as a Polish word it exists only in prison slang and means a very, very, very strong, really waaaaaay too strong tea imbibed to induce alternate states of consciousness, or just to pass out.
However, the root "czaj" exists in old Slavic languages and is actually related to waiting - "czaic sie (na kogos)" in Polish means "to lie in wait (for somebody)" (presumably with bad intentions). "Czaj" would be the (not really used) imperative form, so "dlugo czaj" would mean something like "lurk long"! :)
Which isn't a bad thing to do, or so I was told in the olden times.

I REALLY like "lurk long"--and it's appropriate in its way too, because I was a longtime lurker on MeFi before I started speaking up.