From a story I wrote about a character of the same name who lived in the world before.

I wanted to use 'Silent Winter' as my nick here (as I do elsewhere) but it was taken - it's an artistic interpretation of my Chinese name.
So I went with the title of my online comic 'Trollum Thinks' (about a troll who accidentally became a wise(-ish) sage)
(read here: http://foolsisland.com/silentwinter/index.html )

It comes from my younger days when I was the captain of a boat that was made of gyros meat

Yours: you just wanted to look mean or something.

Mine: lastnamefirstname.

Last time I guessed on the OP's name. This one's mine.

QC is an abreviation for Quiet chat (as one word, reason I separate here, you'll see below). It was my username 4 years ago, when I joined onto an anime forum. I ended up becoming the moderator pretty soon after that. But, the site was hacked two years ago this month. Myself, and two other moderators were basically made public enemies on the website, as well as the website everyone migrated to, and I'm not sure how or why.

I can't use it as my username anywhere ever again, because they'd know it's me, they'd track me down, they'd harass me until I cave in to them, or until I gave up on the internet. But, I can't stand to let the name die. So, I use QC or Quiet_C or something like that, instead of the whole untampered name, to make it harder for them to find me.

Paingiver from Black Crypt?

Mine is from the character names Taran in that 1985 movie The Black Cauldron, and Gwydion which is the name used by Prince Alexander in King's Quest III.

Mine's a nickname from an ex. It stuck back then; I think we were still dating but close to dumping his cheating, lying ass or just broken up when I made this account. I had no other idea what to name myself so I just stuck to this.

Wish I could change it now since I have a better nickname I go by :(

You can change your name. You just have to contact support about it.

The first time I played Icewind Dale, back in 2000, I needed a name for a Elf Thief I had created for my party. This name popped into my head and that was that. Since then, I have used it in pretty much every fantasy CRPG that I've played and that had Elves as a playable race. He always ends up as a Thief or Ranger type character, or a mix between the two.

my name comes from the days back in everquest 1 was using the random name generator as all my choices where taken and then it came up with aluini which i used for a while then i decided to make my main character and stuck an e at the end and here i am over a decade and a bit later with my name being aluinie.

Great posts so far! By the way here is a tip. My name comes from a game. Though this game has not "pain" in it. So no Painkiller.

max payne?

black crypt?
or maybe wizard 101?

Warmachine? I couldn't find many options that haven't already been listed :P