Everyone in Shadowrun has one, usually. Real names are dangerous after all.

How many characters put into consideration where the knickname comes from? And how many happened in-game?

One happened in-game with our group. Vic, the group's driver and connection to one of the Mafia families in Seattle.

They were collecting a debt from a cab driver who had suddenly gone missing, and were investigating his taxi. Unfortunetly, Vic misheard the number the cab was (Or suffered mental dyslexia), and got into Cab 24 instead of Cab 42.

The second he's inside the passenger's seat, the door slams and locks beside him, and he's being driven away by some insane Indian yelling at him in Punjabi. At twice the legal speed limit, at least.

Using his Cybernetics, he displays to the group what is going on, and demands help. His reply? Laughter.

It turns out the guy he was with is the Trainer for the Cab Company, and he gets overtime as long as he's "Training Someone".

Finally, the group gets the dispatcher to let Vic out, but not before recording what happened, and forwarding it to his Mafia Contact.

Ever since, he was known as "Vic the Cabbie". As Mafia knicknames go, not too bad.

ColLector. an enchanter that collected and used paranormal animal parts. Colin Lector

Inundation. a manipulation magic specialist that loved overwhelming force.

Shatter. combat mage that loved to break shit.

Sterling - Got her nickname from a P.I. after waking up from a decade-long coma. A SURGEr who can digest pretty much anything and has multiple rows of silvery grey teeth.

Bitesized - A scrawny human hacker who was the only one not to goblinize in a huge family of orks and some trolls. A childhood nickname that never, ever left. It didn't help that she frequently forgot to eat because of her addiction to the Matrix.

The only one that's had a decent handle was my mage/street doc. Creatively, he was Doc.

He never cast a spell, never fired his gun, only made the plans, directed the team and patched them up afterwards. He was rarely found without a drink at his side, and he gravitated to any bar during a meet, where he could usually get *somebody* to buy him a drink. When the crap invariably hit the fan, he was already behind cover with a pithy one-liner.

Shame when he died.

I've found the best way to generate 'handles' is to have the characters read over eachother's sheets, and then vote on names appropriate to a given character. Everyone gets a vote, except the person who's character it is.

Doc will always live on in our hearts.

And strike from your dreams, like the vessel of the Spider spirit he turned into.

Mhuhahahahahahaha.

Hard Six. Ala "Sometimes you gotta roll the hard six." nBSG.

Mister <Insert Letter>. Sometimes its just profession. Though I'm not fond of using colors, despite the great movie.

Special Ed. When I'm feeling like a d-bag. Or we're playing a game closer to the side of pink mohawks than 'try to be a professional'.

Wrestler type superstar names work decently well too.

Longshot - Sniper with a semi-deathwish who took on missions with low odds of success/survival.
Hawkeye - Company bred and raised sniper, part of a five person cell that got (mostly) destroyed when the company suspected them of betrayal.
B Bandit - Blind Technomancer, follower of The Black Hat.
Fey - Dryad street kid, was given the name by the cops when she was first arrested since she didn't have (Or wouldn't tell them) a name.

All have been ones that I've given my characters, but only one was decided by the character herself.

They got welded onto his body. Really.
Oh you meant Street-Names? O.o
Different. Some were given to some of my characters, some are coming from backgroundstory(seldom enough) and some are chosen by me/the character.
VAN the Troll . . Because he had enough Chrome and Body and strength in him to warrant the Name. Also, he had the License Plate of a Van that rammed him hanging around his Neck.
He lived to walk away and to tell about the Crash. The Van did not. And the Driver did not either. Part of the reason why he had to walk away from it. Because the driver was the son of some Gang-Lord which made living there a bit problematic . .
FACE(s/less) got those three because he had the annoying habbit of NEVER EVER looking the same when meeting up with other characters.
Devilrat. Because he's a Dwarf. A sleazy Rigger. By the name of Devlin Rattan. Yeah, people are cruel like that.
Robin Blood/Little-John/Joe Fixit. Troll Bowyer. Real Name of John Little. Grey Skin. 3m Tall. short dark green/grey hair. Grey skin. Mostly active at night. "Joe" *Yes?" "Fix it" 'cracks knuckles' *Yes*

Zepher - a light breeze went with a sammi who prided herself on a light touch.

Orangeade. Chaos mage with commlink in his head, orange eyes and magic tasting and smelling like oranges.

Two Level 1 Connections that my group thought up: "Crunch and Club"

Think Jay and Silent Bob.

Club is Jay, a Dwarf with maxed out Body, able to take abuse and isn't afraid to dish it out, either. He sounds like a boxer that didn't get out in time, but has an interesting story behind that... Never, ever shuts up unless Crunch is talking, in which case they practically invert.

Crunch is Silent Bob, a Troll with a Maxed Out Strength, and decent Intelligence. The group found to thier surprise that he's also a Professor of Paranormal Biology at University of Seattle and quite the public speaker. He also is a master of "Throwing Weapons: Metahuman Body".

Guess who he throws into combat.

Oh, and I thought magic was supposed to smell like bacon.

Smiles - Elven Face that got the name rather early in his career. Everyone agrees he's a greasy crook, but he keeps his word and always manages to lose all of his money on expensive objects and gambling. He's homeless, earning a roof over his head with one night stands. He sleeps under a bridge pretty frequently.

My character wanted to be called "Impuls3". The joke being that, having not caught her yet, the law has "poor 'Impuls3' control".

"Wanted to" being the operative words there... my group ended up renaming her. Everyone calls her 'the Runt'. The Runt gave up on resisting it after a while. She was given this name for being a cringing, extremely skinny little thing (though she's not really short. 5'6") and because, at nineteen, she's the "kid" of the party.

Chevy: Technomancer that Emerged after some mobsters tried to kill him, left with amnesia he woke in the the trunk of an old chevy that was about to be compacted.

Kinda like pilots and their callsigns. Others in the squadron are responsible for naming the new guy...often based on something embarrassing.

I love this concept! If you add in that he loves to interrogate people using the name "Chuck Finley," I get a strong "Sam from Burn Notice" vibe. I'd love to see his sheet, if you wouldn't mind posting it.

"Fuse"- Dwarf Hermetic with a temper problem. Adrenaline Junkie. Also sensitive about his height (doubly so around orks and trolls).

Screamer-drawf TM/biker/rigger so called due the the custom bike that if wanted whet traveling at high speed opens vents to produce a sound like a stuka. He killed a high ranking mafia and his goons when they tryed to kill him with his own drones not knowing he was a TM though he didn't at the time either. He hit the ground and re-amerged as a dwarf go-ganger still ran as a TM but it was a good cover also rather fun with his bike other being called to him to pull him out of a sticky situation.

The NPCs in my game that use handles almost always have a story behind them.

Dances with Bitches
A Seattle fixer, obviously Native Amer. He picked the name "Green Piece" for himself, an attempt at a play on words as he catered to mostly eco-radicals. It was so-so. But the name "Dances with Bitches" came up one night at the bar he often conducts deals at (big mistake). It was after a particularly bad day of dealing with Johnsons and Runners. He got hammered and got a little belligerent about some of his more difficult clients.

"Every spirit-damn day it's the same spirit-damn shit! 'Green, get me a rocket launcher, no that costs too much, now I need five fake SINs, no I don't know how I blew through them all so fast. Oh, can you get me an 'effin DocWagon wagon and 30lbs of plastic explosives, I need them right away'. Damn Bitches, have no idea the trouble I have to go through for their stupid toys! No respect! Dance through the hoops 'Green, dance for them! And the 'effin J's no better! 'I need a team that can kill a gang of trolls, are elite hackers but I don't trust those technomancer types, won't sell me out, and won't leave astral traces behind, oh and did I mention I need it in 6 hours'! BITCHES, ALL OF THEM! SO WHAT DO I DO!? I FUCKING DO IT! I CATER TO THESE ASS-CLOWNS!! HERE I AM, FORTY TWO YEARS OLD, AND I'M STILL JUST DANCING WITH BITCHES!... .... (he pauses for a moment or two) .... DANCING WITH BITCHES!

Then he slammed his drink down and left. The next day when he returned to the bar early for a meeting later with a J, he was greeted with chuckles from the bartender and regulars.

Tender: "Hey, if it ain't Dances with Bitches! That's his tribal name, didncha hear? Lemme buy you a drink, Dances with Bitches!"
Dances: "Haha, funny.... assholes."

He expected it to blow over in a week. Instead his runners heard about it and started calling him "Dances" and eventually even Johnsons would call him up asking for Dances with Bitches from the trix searches and word of mouth. He hates his handle but realized that it's the name that has the reputation he earned.

My last (oh god I want to play again, not gm) was Nomad. He, uh, wore out a lot of boots. I've actually started using him as the BBEG for my current campaign, spreading Vitas-3 and christmas cheer everywhere he goes.

Hey, who stole my name?

Could be worse.

There could be a Drone named "Nomad" and a Megacorp is making lots of money off of it.

That happened to "Steel Lynx".

Sticks got his name from his hobby of playing pool and his specialization in clubs. This has sometimes caused confusion.

Ancient History originally took his handle 'cause he wore old-fashioned eyeglasses instead of getting cybereyes.

I once had a Night One conspiracy theorist I was going to name Links (because of his theories, plus it was a homophone for Lynx). Unfortunately my GM said that as there was already a Lynx in canon, as a ShadowSea commenter, I couldn't name mine that. I couldn't convince him that multiple people were going to have that handle in various cities.

Our ork shaman goblinized late. She's been called Halfway ever since.

We had a dude who took the full enchilada for cyberware- all four limbs and his torso. He was yclept TinMan.

8-Ball is a physad who likes to shoot pool and once cleaned a guy's clock with a well-thrown billiards ball- yes the black one.

We had a kid who played with us for a short time during a mission where the runners were posing as recovery agents for an insurance company- that is to say, skip tracers who go and recover stolen items or kidnapped people who have high-claim policies on them so that the company can avoid paying the full claim. Anyway, he got chatting with a drunk NPC and tried to convince the guy that he had a micro-sized transponder disguised a a bit of pocket lint. "Buy one of our policies, and you'll always have one of these," he said. "If you are captured or become lost in a disaster, we'll be able to home in on your location." He then went on to botch his check to bluff the guy. He was called "Pocket Lint" for the rest of the campaign.

Short Round is the dwarf getaway driver for the current campaign. He's neither youthful nor Asian, but he has an affinity for old movies.

Nighthawk is just derived from his actual name- Nate Hawke. He got the handle way back in his days as a cadet at Annapolis, and it stuck.

During the last campaign, the characters dealt with a fixer called Smoke whose face they never saw. If he appeared outside his office (where he was concealed by tinted glass) he used a spell that caused the smoke from the cheroot or cigarette he smoked to hang around his head.

Smoke's closest associate and bodyguard was a lady street sam called Mirrors.

Characters who start without a handle generally get one picked by the other players- unless the character has absolutely no quirks, distinguishing characteristics, or personality at all, which seems to be all to frequent in my games these days.

Compass is a Chaos Mage with a Orientation System. He uses his Radar sensor in his partial cyberleg to map out everything. Anywhere you want to go... Compass usually has a map for that area.

It's a little-known fact that Seattle hosts twenty-seven elven archers calling themselves "Nemesis."

And how many "WizWyrm"s?

One at a time. Whenever there's more than one, they fight to the death and the winner eats the loser's corpse.

I guess that my handle of "Compass" is pretty unique... good!

Most of our group are called by their (first) names more than their handles for some reason, though they have them. The characters are very quirky and have personalities, though... we're a very RP-and-story-focused bunch.

Our Face is sometimes called 'Tyke', which is just short for his name 'Tykell'.

Our troll shaman, Tom, has a bulletproof duster hat, a trenchcoat with a heaping load of mods on it, and the Squatter lifestyle. We may refer to him as "Hobo Batman".

And the other troll, the enormous chromed-out hurtsponge, is a cage fighter. His name, which we usually call him by, is Andre... but his fight name is Fezzik.

Our 4e sam was also our field medic. His player eventually settled on "Jack the Ripper" as his street name, in part because we all agreed that there would probably be like four or five dozen gang leaders, hitmen, etc. using that handle and that it would be funny for all of the Jacks to claim to have been the first. And for people to get confused - "You're Jack the Ripper? I thought you were an orc!" "Wait, an orc? Isn't Jack the Ripper a ghoul?" "No, no, you're both wrong - he's that Triad hit man..."

Edit: I wasn't running the game, but if I were I would probably have nervous or impressed people attribute the actions of other Jacks to the sam with incomplete or vague references. "You're Jack the Ripper? Hey, man, I don't want any trouble - I heard about what you did to that priest" or "Jack the Ripper? I've heard of you - real slick job with the AZT extraction. I would have figured you'd have skipped town by now!"

"El Leon de Acero" - Fully chromed Bodyguard out of Bogota... Full Cyberlimd replacement, with a cybernetic "Lion's Mane" implanted at neck and shoulders within his Cyber torso/skull... He stands out a bit, but not all that bad when you look at the other denizens of Bogota. He works directly for one of the Cartels as a Bodyguard for the "Upper Management."

"Nexus" - My Prime Runner Hacker in Hong Kong. He is a cyberlogician who parted ways with Knight Errant, after he was captured by Mitsuhama. Since Knight Errant did not attempt to have him freed (he was an undercover operative, in the shadows building dossiers on teh Shadowrunners in Hong Kong), and his team left him hanging after his capture (They thought that he was sent up the well to an orbital Mitsuhama prison), he decided that he no longer owed the Corporation any loyalty. He is back on the streets running again (with his old team no less... hey they are pretty good). He is a fairly influential Shadowrunner with a cumulative Loyalty/Connection rating total of Contacts equalling 220 points.

"Durga Syn" - Romani Thaumaturgical Forensics Specialist..

I often develop the 'Runner's name in character background. I tend to have some fairly diverse backgrounds, with interesting plot hooks and developmental points. Unfortunately, I do not always get to play the characters that I create. I have many more character ideas developed than I have time to actually play. Oh well... at least my version of Shadowrun will be interestingly populated with Characters, both PC and NPC alike.

My mage's Street name was R-Kayne Castor because his real name was Roland Kayne Castor.

Back in 2nd edit I had a Troll Heavy Weapons Specialist. THough His Street name was Jackhammer everyone called him Billy Bob because he was from Arkansas.

The three main PCs I've used:

Ichiro Mitzushima - Japanese Human Samurai Adept - He was NOT a shadowrunner and loathed all those vermin. He just needed to gather enough cash to return to Japan and deal with the Yakuza who'd forced him underground by killing one of his charges (and pinning the murder on him). He was a really cold fish so people started calling him, Sushi (which he also hated).

FUBAR - a totally cybered out Orc with dreams of joining a combat biking team. He tried to live the lifestyle (but without the nuyen to back it up) and simply loved the FUBU clothing line. So, he named himself after it, thus a FUBU lover, or FUBAR... (He wasn't all that bright)

Thomas O'Rielly - THE luckiest face ever. Definately had the luck o' the Irish, so he started calling himself Blarney Stone. The initials also turned out to be quite prophetic.

Mark

My last character was an elven Face -- the only elf, mind you, in a group that contained him and three orks. He started off as Ace O. Spades (a play on his actual initials, Alexander Octavius Sterling), but being a corp-baby, high-society elf surrounded by orks from the ghetto, he ended up with a new nickname pretty quick. The one that stuck was Pix (short for pixie). His massive charisma spawned a lot of gay jokes too, because he was just too darn pretty.

So very very pretty indeed... Damned Elves...

1-800-MAGIC?

Fuzzbomb... Surged mage (think bunny girl) earned the nickname on her first real run. She lost her temper and overcast a lightning ball spell at some gangers trying to hijack the truck they just stole). The slow troll heavy wpns guy (played well) looked at them looked at the cute little bunny and just said "fuzz.. " looked back "bomb"

And that was it... she had her nickname. (and with her temper it fit way way too well...)



Ohs - Troll wrecking ball. Trained in demolitions and construction, turned runner.. with unlucky... "Oh..sh.." got shortened to Ohs

I've a physad junkie whose handle is Roach (for the drug reference and the dirtyness), and a troll tank named Aleksei (after The Rhino from Spiderman, because he runs through walls).
The best I've seen at a table though is our fully cyberwared medic (all 4 limbs and the torso replaced) who calls himself Dark Horse. But he showed up to a run once with clear plasteel cybler limbs that showed off the inner workings, and since then we've only ever called him Fishbowl.

• Vanguard – An cybered-elf focused on stealth, intrusion, and observation. Had a fully tricked out eyes-and-ears recording package back in the days when it still cost real essence to do so.
• Bulwark – A phys-ad bodyguard, who also runs the shadows. He would not knowing take or complete a job that involved hurting "innocents", which pushed him and his mates into Hooding more than traditional running.
• QB – A thrown-weapons phys-ad. Used to play pro-ball before being framed for murder (after he refused to shave points for the mob). After "getting off lite" with involuntary-manslaughter, his now-criminal SIN forced him into the shadows.
• Rick – semi-retired ork runner, who now works primarily as a fixer with mercenary connections. He works out of a nightclub named Teach bán (Gaelic for "white house", actually owned by one of his false identities), and does what he can quietly to help those living in the Ork Underground.

PCs
Redcrow - Amerind Street Shaman (The name Redcrow is actually quite personal to me and I've used it for characters in various games over the years)
Hood - Human Street Sam (cybered to the gills this character was built during 2e right after the Cybertechnology book came out and ended up with around .06 Essence)


NPCs
Malice - Female Ork Street Sam (A one woman hit squad who took a contract to hunt down the PCs)
Lodin - Human Street Sam (This NPC was actually a genetically engineered clone (one of several) that escaped and the PCs were hired to "reacquire"). Think Universal Soldier packed with a ton of Delta-grade Cyberware and Cultured Bioware.
Loki - Human Mage (Mayhem and mischief with very little direct combat ability. This NPC was a lot of fun to taunt the PCs with)

Yeah, unlike the bullshit "Maverick" and "IceMan"...

Going off old memories here...

"Blowdog" "Toonces" (the Driving Cat)

Anyway, the coolest callsign I remember was "Nordo", for No Radio. The pilot got it when he was a trainer and his wingman was just completely fucking up his bomb runs, so he called out Nordo which was enough of a safety issue to immediately scrub the flight and RTB.


As for SR, my Chinese Ork magician is "Lei sheng", Chinese for "thunder".

Nothing special but

Kal, short for Kalashnikov, as AK's were his preferred weapon.

Liluvus Miredivine, AKA Peccadillo Scintilla, AKA "Pikky"
The NPC hacker in my current game. An androgynous pixie hacker adept. Again, picked the handle Peccadillo Scintilla itself, but nobody can pronounce it correctly so they instead call the pixie "Pikky" as a short of Peccadillo and because it's a pixie. "Pikky" doesn't mind.