Why do paintball players need nicknames? If you go into corporate America you will meet lots of Johns, Rachels and a few Mr. Smiths or President Coopers, but you don't meet very many Mad Dogs or Big Reds. Paintballers, though, love to give themselves names that the rest of the world doesn't know about.
I'm just as guilty as anyone else - I've used the nickname "Miser" ever since I first chose a nickname to play a multiplayer computer game. Incidentally, I chose the name from another computer game character - the ghost miser from King's Quest IV, if you remember that game. There's nothing special about my nickname, I just liked the name as a kid and it has followed me onto the paintball field (unless I can just go as "Dave").
I realize that nicknaming might be more prevalent in the woods than on the speedball field (though speedballers do come up with creative nicknames) and it's possible that the military-esque nature of woodsball suits the military tradition of nicknames for enlisted soldiers. I, though, have another theory:
Paintball started gaining popularity in the mid-to-late '80s. At the same time in America, 1986 to be exact, Top Gun came out and everybody wanted to be known as Maverick or Goose or some other similar-type name. With paintball, though, the naming game just stuck. Then again, maybe not.
If you have a creative paintball nickname, share it in the comments and tell us the story behind it.
Comments
I got the paintball nickname, “Frog”, because my mother named me Jeremiah, after the 1970’s film with Robert Redford, “Jeremiah Johnson”. As most of you probably know, there is a song titled, “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog”. I just thought Frog was cooler than Bull Frog
My brother nicknamed me Dutchboy after the famous paint logo because I was always playing paintball–The boy never stuck thank goodness but I have been Dutch ever since. My kids even call me Dutch. There are unwritten rules when it comes to names or monikers though.One is you can’t name yourself–it needs to come from others and it’s usually based on some characteristic you have. You can read more in an article I wrote about the subject if you’d like.
http://generaldutch.com/?p=576
Good article Miser
Most of our clubs nicknames come from forum usernames, a lot our players don’t even know each others real names. My main problem is that there’s about five Andrew’s in our club so I’ve always been NME (enemy) as my primary marker was a System X NME for years, not very clever but it does the job.
Our team players don’t have nick names. We do name our paintball guns though.
My name is Lionheart and have had it since it was given to me in 1987 by my cousins due to my style of play….FEARLESS
I got the name Zen’aku when I was at YCP. I was known as the demon wolf. In japenese it means neither good or evil both exist in one body, but belong to neither. All of my friends agree that is prefect for me.
This is also very common in other extreme sports. Look at MMA (ufc), Snowboarding, BMX, Skateboarding. You can also find it in some of the great sports like Baseball and Hockey.
I got my Nick name from my Vetern Hospital Staff, I play from my wheelchair and I sport a Ponytail. I told the SCI staff that I started to play Scenario paintball and they told me I look like a Wise Old Hippe Dude so I took the Name and still playing
Mine is Ghost cos it started when i first played woodsball i was the last one left against 3 people and i took all of them out one by one and no one knew where i was and my friend said dude you were like a ghost in there and it just stuck
I find the nicknames much more prevalent in MilSim games rather than the casual ones. I personally do not have a nickname. I have been getting into the MilSim side a lot more, and hope that I don’t have to come up with one as I am really horrible with making up names. I have been connecting for a lot of games by using this site.
http://www.airsplat.com/states.htm
Its kind of like a yellow pages for fields and forums. It has been a great resource for networking and setting up games, and ops.