Welcome Wednesday: Embarrassing email names?

[Dave LIAO]

☕️ Hello there Atlassian Community! For this week's Welcome Wednesday, let's chat about email:

A certain email provider[1] now allows their users to create email aliases. (Finally!)

So, if you created an email like cutie.cat.taco.lover.12345.xoxo@bigmegacorp.emailback in the day, you now can make dave.liao.taco.supreme@bigmegacorp.email

Have any email addresses you're proud or embarrassed about that you've made? How did you decide to make that specific email?

📢 Feel free to share the email name, or describe it in a roundabout way. I'm looking forward to reading about your horror stories past deeds. 😄

[1] This email provider shall remain unnamed, since they don't need free advertising...

[Dave LIAO]

😬 I'll start! I've created a few embarrassing emails - checking my archives, the most cringe-worthy ones involved my first name.

I have no idea why, but I prefixed my emails with david instead of dave, so something like: davidduck123@mailco

I won't share the exact email, but it was worse than that. 🤮

Thankfully I deleted the account a few years ago while I was (digitally) spring cleaning. 🧹

[Anne Saunders]

What on earth compelled all of us to put our ages and birth years in our email addresses? 😂

[Dave LIAO]

I never did that, but so many of my peers did 🤣 

[Amanda Barber]

Wow, that's great news for a certain provider's users. LOL!

My kid was just asking why I would have chosen MandiMay14 as my first screen name since "clearly" that's not something I would have wanted to keep forever. (Insert teenager attitude and eye roll...) I was trying to explain that it was the first screen name and I never imagined what AOL would eventually evolve (devolve) into. 🤪

[Dave LIAO]

OY. I forgot about AIM screennames... I think I had an obnoxious prefix for my AIM name, and it might've been related to a gaming guild I was part of. 😂😂😂

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

My old Workmate which was Over 140 KG had Mail with Name "Frank the Tank" :D

[Dave LIAO]

😂 Love it!

[Anne Saunders]

The year was 1996.

My friend James and I loved anime, watching hours of subbed classics like Bubblegum Crisis; Ah, My Goddess; Ranma 1/2; and Tenchi Muyo! He was actually studying Japanese, and I picked up a word or two.

Hotmail launched mid-summer, and James helped me create my first webmail address - "ryukochan" or "little dragon girl" which is, to this day, me on most platforms. It even followed me to Yahoo mail when that was in beta in 1997. 

Honestly, it's only embarrassing when I have to spell it for a harried store clerk - because that's the address I still use for junk mail.

Fun Fact: My first email address didn't even have a domain, because it was on Prodigy. It was just a string of 7 alphanumeric characters that we didn't get to choose - 6 identified your account, with the last one indicating an individual.

[Dave LIAO]

Bubblegum Crisis is amazing, awesome to see someone else who has actually watched it!

Watched it in Japanese with English subtitles, and I still listen to its 80's soundtrack once in awhile 🙌🏻 

[Leslie Barrett]

In 1995 my family moved from Iowa to Arizona. Shortly after, the movie "Babe" came out. We bought the VHS when my son was 2 and it quickly went on a regular rotation in our house. In his 2 year old logic he came up with the name 'Iowahootie' for the name of the border collie in the movie. And thus, an email and AIM screen name were born...

[Matt Doar]

So what is wrong with me? I just use "mdoar" everywhere. 

Actually, 30 years ago we started using a redirection service xyz.com, so that

• mdoar@xyz.com goes to whatever back-end email I'm using, e.g. gmail
• kdoar@xyz.com goes to my wife's actual email
• doar@xyz.com goes to both of us in different email accounts

That's worked out quite well over the years. Addresses for the children when they were younger also cc'd our email addresses for oversight

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

@Matt Doar 

I don't see nothing wrong with that.

That's ”A doar able” 😁🤠

[Barbara Szczesniak]

Like @Matt Doar, I have used bszcz@emailprovider.com since 1999. I never had a need for a personal email address before then; work gave you whatever format they gave you. I still have the same personal email address/provider that I set up in 1999, since I have never had a reason to change it.

I do know people who have included their or their child's birth dates. I think this is from the days before you had to worry about people using this information to steal your identity. Heck, when I was at university, your student number was your social security number.