Great topic idea!
Well, my name:
sk8kid1. As some may know, I've been skateboarding for about 5 years now. Being serious about the sport and thinking sk8 to be kind of a nerdy abreviation, I shunned the term until I signed up for my first account on an internet site. Because I wanted to have something that related skateboarding and computers, I chose the "geeky" term of sk8 to prefix my name.
(note: sk8 really is used by skaters, I just didn't like the way at the time).
I didn't think sk8 was enough, so I thought of more. At the time, I was well... Just younger then you're supposed to be to sign up for most things on the net, so I chose kid because I thought people would be older than me. I thought that sounded pretty good, but then I decided to add 1 so that if anyone decided to make it a category, I could show that I was the first.
Now sometimes I just use sk8kid because the 1 can be a bit accessive, and since my name's out there now, I'm not afraid of using tommy or tommy c.

I won't go into specifics about mine, suffice it to say it's a reference to my real world initials.

Lol, you can probably guess why my username is Mike. Since Mike isn't usually available on sites, I sometimes use the username MikeF or mf723.

Personally, I actually rather dislike overly long and complex usernames. If I am writing on a forum, I am writing in the same way I would be talking, and in conversations it is both polite and neccessary to use another person's name occasionally, and this is a pest if they go and call themselves evildemonicdevil6663 or something of the sort.

This is why I prefer people to call me Dark, even when I'm registered somewhere as dark empathy, ---- in fact, though I've occasionally found the username Dark to be taken, I've only once run into someone with it, ---- on Legend of the green dragon.

I must admit, I'm rather bad for abbreviating people's names if I think they are too long in conversation, either to the first useable word, the initial letters, or (in cases where I am physically too lazy to go and look up the spelling of somebody's really long and complicated username), a convenient first silable.

a miner issue I have come across though, is that when people use half coherent letter combinations and Hal tries to pronounce them, I've sometimes made mistakes.

for example, there was a post on the Sryth.com forum the other day by somebody called Dbvlik8, ---- that's D b v L i k 8!

I think it is a general issue of people who work via the structure and site of letters rather than their actual sound, ---- ie, they have names that look nice, but don't think about pronunciation at all. I've had a similar thing with several fantasy or sf authors, who write names that are nerely unpronounceable. Ian M. banks is particularly bad for this. when I am reading, even in braille, I have to physically be able to pronounce the name myself, often speak it out loud. I've also occasionally thought with unusual pronunciation combinations, such as the tongue click on an african X sound, if I come across somebody's name which requires it. where as sometimes I've been discussing books with friends, and they have no idea at all how to pronounce certain character's names, or pronounce them in a totally wrong way because that's how they've interpreted them as they've seen them, ----- in one extreme case, I met somebody who went through the hobbit persistantly giving Mr. baggins the first name bill!

I wouldn't put this difference exclusively to non-working vs working eyeballs though, sinse look at the way authors like J.K. rowling, the master tolkeen himself, and Tad williams (my favourite non-tolkeen fantasy author), come up with their names (for Williams, rather interesting perspective on this, read the artical on http://www.shadowmarch.com/tad.asp  his own site.

Lol! I remember the day you joined here. I remember 'tellin you about here and then you registered.

And when you were locked out of your forum account...
That was a nightmaere.
Well, I honestly hate (*hate!) hate my username so much... It's bad, I now decided to never! Use my name on a forum...

Dark, your synth's pronunciation of my name reminds me of my catchphrase; I usually save it for the end of some high-powered spy quest.  Right after I just beat the guy (before I save the sexy lay-tee) I let him know that he was just "conspira-zed."

Well, I believe this is the first time name changing has really come up seriously. I've seen it allowed on some forums, but I'm not sure about this varient.

I admit, if the possibility was there, I might have shortened Dark empathy down to my usual just plane Dark after being on this forum for a while, ---- but I think it'd just confuse matters right now if I did.

ConspiraZ? lol! well the pronunciation is sort of like that, ---- though with a shortened E sound so the last sylable rhymes with head. Oncemore, a case of Us vs Uk english conflict I think.

Indeed. I remember one occurrence on the sryth forum where one member, Dustbinbag (don't ask me why), got locked out of his account, and re-registered with a new name, and the text "I am Dustbinbag!" written under his Avatar, which confused several new players.

One of the advantages of working with a fairly perminant online name, is that I'm not likely to change it, unless to shorten things down from Dark empathy to Dark, --- assuming of course "Dark" is not already taken.

As an amusing aside, I even have an alt web address, which i use for filling in stupid, but occasionally necessary web forms where I do not wish my actual real world address to be available.

First name: Dark.
Last name: Empathy.

Street address: the Ivory tower, 666 Desolation row.
city: The windmills of my mind.

Hmmm, I disagree about being able to change your user name whenever you want.  Then it'd be like the old audiogames.net forum all over again, where people tried impersonating developers and stuff like that.

As for my user name, I came up with it in 2000 or 2001, when I got one of my first email accounts.  A friend signed me up for it and I was trying to think of a cool user name.  At the time, I was really into radio, and there's a top 40 station here whose monecur is "ZHT" based on their call letters KZHT.  Since I listened to it alot back then, I just picked zhtfreak.  My friend spelled "freak" wrong, so when I got on the Internet for myself and started signing up for stuff I corrected the spelling and have just continued to use it.

Although I didn't think about it when I signed up for a local radio forum, so some people might think I work for the station since alot of people on that forum have user names based on favorite stations in the market.

Hmm. I didn't know people were doing that jtfreak, but now I do.

Well I can see how that could turn into chaos, for example, people trying to be Justin or Liam or something.

Wuff wuff dood? lol! I like! though I must admit Wuver (which hal pronounces to rhyme with hoover), isn't something I'd naturally associate with dogs, I think in england the term your thinking of would come out as wuffer.

then again, I believe every language has different ways of pronouncing animal noises. Apparently French ducks go Quaak and not Quack, and in one of the ancient greek tragedies, the frogs were listed as going rakakakax co ax co ax!

slightly more dignified than ribbit ribbit! lol!