"My wife's nickname, for a number of years, was "Woody" (she finally got away from it when she married me, which may give you some hint where it came from)."

She was hard and tough before you softened her up?

Am I a great person? Hell no - by most metrics I'm pretty much an asshole. -TSlothrop

"Is there an Internet mafia nickname generator?  If not, there should be.

Yes, there is right here:

http://pages.prodigy.net/mlemus/mobnamegenerator.htm

Have fun!

there's only one way to find out...

I got a nickel.

Cash money. Up front.

It's like "Night of the Living Republican." The idiots are right outside, and they want to eat your brain.

It seems very unlikely that anyone is going to offer to pay you $500,000 to reveal your disliked childhood nickname, or for that matter, it seems unlikely that they would offer you even $5.  I doubt that anyone cares.  But if it should turn out that some wealthy and deranged person does care deeply about your embarrassing nickname and will pay you $500,000 to reveal it, then I would then propose that even though I do not have any such childhood nickname, I would be willing to legally change my name to anything that this hypothetical person would like (assuming that the courts will accept it) in return for the same amount, $500,000.  There are lots of things that I would do for such a large amount of money, and relatively few things that I would not do for such an amount.  I could use the money.

I used to go by a different handle several years ago.  Until my then-girlfriend (universally disliked by all my friends) became extremely controlling and would find me online whenever I wasn't with her and begin interrogating me.  This got so bad that when we broke up it turned into full-fledged stalking.  She even bought an Xbox and paid for a Live account to stalk me on Xbox Live (she had never owned or even played a video game until then).  I got fed up with it, changed my phone number, stopped using my old handle, and began using this one since she had been given her own nickname of "Goro" (despite having only two arms) by a couple of my friends.  Weeks of bliss followed until she started showing up at the house and had to be threatened with a restraining order.  By then, it had become such a running joke to the people I knew that the name wound up sticking.

Well, it is traditional for people from Swa, New York, after all. ;-)

at which point I very politely ask them to call me by my given name.

Is that so, Picky McFussybutt?

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I, too, find it offensive for the most part. I think there is a great deal to the power of "Naming" and I think it is often overlooked. Frequently, it is a subtle (even not so subtle) powerplay. "I named you." Just watch the Seinfeld episode where George desperately tries to earn a cool nickname from his coworkers.

Some of my nicknames have come on the athletic field by people who did not know my real name--Kareem, Weird Science--and they were bestowed out of respect for certain skills and the fact that because I was noticed for those skills, I suddenly needed a name. It both created and added to a mystique on some level.

My nickname thefadd stuck out of a sort of camaraderie and membership to a group. We three had nicknames for ourselves in my apartment but our fourth roommate wasn't given one literally because we all felt him not worthy. We named ourselves collectively and drew power from that.

My gf went to burningman last year and said there was this guy in their group who went around nicknaming everyone on the first day. To me, that smacks of an opportunistic play--the bad version of nicknaming. I'm not familiar enough with other societies to comment on a difference but I think in America it reaches back to the ownership/domination culture. Look at the people who try to give out nicknames and they're almost certainly trying to be buddy-buddy in a way that subtly establishes themselves as your superior in some aspect of life--work/socially/etc.

It is difficult to counter without simply being a dick about. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a dick about because it's a dick move in the first place. Sometimes the situation calls for a more measured approach, however. People will frequently try to name you based on what their initial impression of you is. Key on this and return the nickname salutation as one of their boys club barbs by controverting their initial impression of you and thus any applicability of their nickname. These people tend to be persistent, however, until you clearly establish your mark as their superior (which actually isn't difficult because this outlook is tends toward the neanderthal).

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I've been given four nicknames in my life, all by people who couldn't pronounce by name.  My tactic has been to get them to pronounce the first syllable and then the second syllable...and then say: Put it together.

They all failed at that last step.  

The failure to follow instructions: the reason why civilization and Ikea furniture are doomed.

"I gave myself this random amalgamation of letters and numbers as a handle because I didn't think I'd be around here very long.

Guess you all proved me wrong on that one. Now I'm stuck with it... forever. At least its a handle nobody else on the internet uses."

I would have preferred to use just plain "skeeter" on the 'net, but there's lots of them out there, hence "skeeter1".  Close enough, I guess.

BTW, does the "0157" have anything to do with E. coli  0157:H7?  Yeah, I'm a retired microbiologist (among other things).

there's only one way to find out...