We used to play a lot of PGA Golf
On the Sega, years ago. Everyone had a golfing name to keep their statistics. One friend of mine, Mark, who's short, tubby and balding sat down for his first play of the game and on the list of pre-generated characters was a real life PGA golfer called Bob Tway. We looked at Mark, and looked at the game and everyone decided that Bob Tway suited him much better than his real name.

So much better in fact that the name stuck like glue and 12 years later he's still known as Bob Tway to all and sundry. He even introduces himself as Bob Tway to people he's never met before. The only people who still call him Bob are his family, who for a long time were at first mystified, then annyoed and then resigned when people rang them up asking for "Bob".

My particular golfing name stuck too, although not quite as badly and at least I got to keep my first name. That's where the "MattDP" come from. I almost got christend as Matt da Prat but (in a small mercy) the bloke keying it in was stoned and made a couple of mistakes and it came out as Matt de Prata. This eventually evolved into Matt de Pratae, which at least sounds vaguely continental.

At least I didn't get lumbered with "Jonny Spank", as one gentleman did.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 19 May 2006, 10:02, Reply)