Where did the name ‘MentalMars’ come from?

Every hero has a great origin story, I just have a sequence of dumb events that let me down this path :p

My Origin Story

Back in the day when I got my first computer and needed an online persona, there was this very popular music platform. As you do, I needed an account with a unique username. Because I was young and all the cool kids had a cool Gamertag, I therefore also needed one. It had to be something funny or badass. However, all the awesome names I could come up with were already taken. I even got to the point where I randomly smashed the keys on my keyboard to generate a name. You guessed it, even that one was taken.

Mission to Mars

So I needed to be creative. I always had this thing that the first and second parts of a name should start with the same letter. This created the first piece of the puzzle. Then I looked at what defined me at the time and how I could incorporate that into the name. When all of this was happening, I just watched the movie “Mission to Mars“. It was supposed to be the big Hollywood movie of the year. However, coming back from the cinema, I told my co-worker about the movie. However, he apparently wasn’t paying attention and missed the whole point that I was talking about a movie. Therefore, he thought that I was telling him that I personally visited the planet mars. This became a thing and when I didn’t hear him and he tried getting my attention, he would say “hello mars, here earth”. The “here earth” was already a thing you say when trying to get someone’s attention when they are daydreaming.

Basically, my co-worker thought I was a bit crazy aka mental, and from Mars. So I combined the two words to form MentalMars. And you guessed it, I finally could sign-up for that account. The name stuck as it was my easy access pass to every service/platform.

Making a Name for Yourself

My cousin was a bit jealous of my Gamertag as he thought it was a cool name. He was jumping from one Gamertag to another in search of a badass name. But if I try and analyze my Gamertag, it’s a bit weird. However, the name isn’t that important, it’s the reputation you build up and I hope I did a good job there.

So that was my “origin” story. How did you decide on your Gamertag/username?