Changing my IGN (In Game Name) from TekRP to something else has been something in work for a good 6 months now. Couldn’t really find anything that clicked or was smooth, fun, and explained what I did. Name suggestions varied from animals I liked to foods I liked to eat. This was all fun but turned into a real headache.
Back when I was searching for a name, initially, it was because an online talent / marketing company I was a part of, based out of San Francisco, said my original name was copywrite infringement to the band AC/DC. This is my favorite band and I really thought my username was kind of cool. People and young kids at stores asking for my email for the company to send countless amounts of spam emails to would all react to hearing my AC/DC username. Normally it was bobbing their heads in approval, making comments about how they loved the band too, we would make a connection and that Rock’d!
Spending days trying to figure out a name from scratch was a headache and a half. I was also dreading all the online accounts I had and changing them as well. The time it would take to do that and what if something had a recovery email that had already been lost!? “It was okay” I would tell myself while taking deep breaths. TekRP was settled upon, the owner approved with some resistance and years later I’m changing it again.
I’m starting fresh! During the time I’ve taken to build this webpage, I’ve realized something with what I’ve , done in the past, what I’m doing currently and what I’m posting on this webpage, this is my content. Starting fresh and moving forward will mean populating the webpage with content and following it up with YouTube videos explaining it all for people to benefit from.
The name I’ve decided on, with the help of my currently small, but awesome community is “TekTinkers”. At first I was hesitant and had settled on TinkeringTek, but as time went on I thought about what Durlsy had said in that it sounded more fun as TekTinkers, she liked it. Trying to imagine what the two names would look like on an image header of a YouTube video, channel, webpage and application, the acceptance set in.
TekTinkers will be the name of my content. People can still call me “Tek” as they always have. Tinkers illustrates that I might not know what I’m doing, I might break something, but were going to have some fun exploring and learning, I love it! There can now be an added Steampunk vibe that I’m excited about and there doesn’t have to be any requirement that “I know everything” which lifts a huge weight off my shoulders.
There has already been significant progress made on the name change. Turns out this is a process you want to keep kind of quiet because there are folks out there that will try and snipe a name and say you owe them thousands of dollars. My thought process was to tell one name and solidify the other while the snipers are securing the unwanted name.
If you’re ever wanting to do a name change and get a name that is unused across all platforms, you can’t use AI like CoPilot or ChatGTP as they cannot check other systems databases. They are excellent at giving you words that you’ve never heard of before that mean things you might want to infer to. The process I used was to figure out many names and then run them through these webpages. These are the websites used that can help you too;
BrandSnag
Namechk
Handle Match
I’m excited for what the future holds for TekTinkers and loved what TekRP has done but, lets start fresh and see what we can do, YAY!