How did you choose your screen name?

[Elspode]

This thread is around somewhere in a couple of earlier iterations, but I like it when it comes up every now and again so that new people can share, too.

Elspode comes from a couple of things. When I was in junior high, my buddies and I were semi-pro class clowns; sort of an adolescent version of an improv comedy clan, only less organized and without any planning whatsoever. Out of that group came the term "spode", which was applied pretty much the same as "dipshit", "doofus", etc. There is, in fact, a cartoon character which was created by one of our number to accompany the descriptive noun itself, but I don't think I have a rendering anywhere.

When I first hit the Internet, it was a lot easier to get nicks, and I used "Starship Trooper" (my Yahoo handle is still that, FWIW, because I was an early adopter there). After being online for awhile, it became impossible to get that handle, and besides, it was too long to type all the time, so tried to use "spode". Even *that* was frequently used, so I Spanishized it by adding "el", and there you have it.

The original source of "spode" was one of my junior high buddy's grandmother's china, which was an English variety manufactured by the Spode family.