What is in a name?
When I was around 13-14, I was playing a LAN game of "Quake" with a friend I used to write programs with. At the time our in-game aliases were "Brandon" and "David". At some point we came upon a mod for the game that caused blood to splatter on the walls when someone was shot. After a particularly violent attack with a rocket launcher, all that was left of David was a particularly fancy splatter of blood on the wall. I remarked that it looked like something of a Picasso. I changed my alias then to "RedPicasso".
Fast forward to around the time of my 15th birthday. Me, my brother, and our two friends from down the street formed a clan in a then-new game called "Counter-Strike". Our theme was the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse… Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War. I was given War, though not for any particular reason, I just liked it.
Another few years pass, I’m in late high school and taking my fourth year of German. War was so common a name on the internet, so I’d stuck with RedPicasso (still my AIM screen name) throughout. At some point I got tired of people asking if I compared myself to Picasso artistically, as I really have no skill, so a change was in order. I chose to combine the two names, trying on RedWar for size. Well, it was neat and all, but didn’t have that feeling I wanted in a name. Something definitively me. I decided to use the german equivalent "RotKrieg". Yeah, that lasted until about 45 seconds after I told the first person and they said, "Like butt rot?"
So, I took the best aspects of each name, Red and Krieg and since about 5 years ago, RedKrieg has been my alter-ego of sorts. Friends with whom I forged a relationship online before meeting them usually call me Red when we meet in person, and I’ve been RedKrieg so long its as natural as my real name.
