What is the origin of your nick? about ama HOT 1 CLOSED

shama is short for shamabaghodia.

A long time ago I was an art student. I played around with inventing words and making posters intentionally ambiguous. I liked hearing the different interpretations of words I created and would put copies up around campus with no explanation:

For some reason that one stuck and became the alias I used for other art projects.

A little bit later I got into online gaming, mostly Counter-Strike. My friends and I started a gaming clan in which I used the name [xes]shamabaghodia. Here was the website for it: https://web.archive.org/web/20030813074907/http://www.xesclan.org/

Everyone just called me "shama" for short. Later I found out that "shama" means a beautiful girl but by that time, people seem to prefer calling me shama and not by my real name. It even continues today, at work my user in slack is @kyle but my co-workers still often mistakenly use @shama. It's weird because I was introduced to them as "Kyle" but for some reason "shama" is more memorable. I've noticed this at meetups and conferences too.

So now I just own it and respond to being called "shama" the same as if you said "Kyle."

from ama.