How and when is it appropriate to come up with a trail name?

Is it bad luck to hike without one?

Once you have a name, do you have to stick with it?

Safe to assume someone else has to give you your name?

What is your trail name and how did you get it?

What are some of the most creative trail names you've encountered?

I've never met anyone with a trail name who wasn't a thru-hiker. I think the trail name is part of that highly specialized culture. For the majority of us hikers and backpackers, who are not thru-hikers, we just go by what we're called back in civilization.

If BrianLe, our resident Triple Crowner, sees this, hopefully he will comment.

I've been called names while on a trail a few times, most of them were intended to reflect my lack of need for speed.

Trail names is a tradition with the group I have been going backpacking with for many years. It's all in fun, but does have rules:

1) You can't pick your own name, the group must give it to you.
2) It can be changed by the group at any time.
3) It can't be offensive.

Here are some of the names in our group:
Psycho
Ice Man
Mule
NTF (Not to far)
Knee-High
Geronimo
Marmot Mouth
Bert & Ernie ( two brothers )
Tuff
Buff
GQ
Trail Princess
and my trail name is Professor

Most names came from an event or repeated behavior. In my case, explaining things a little too much.

“It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.” (Mark Twain)

So just have fun with it.

At the end of a week long camping/backpacking trip with my scouts, I generally give each boy a "trail name". I try and keep them funny but positive. Sometimes I get help from the troop deciding someone's name. The name changes every year as well. Because of generational differences, sometimes the names make no sense to the boys. Also, they can't pick their name, but if there is one they don't like, then I choose another.

I got tagged with the name "Pika" back in the 70's when I was a fairly serious, though undistinguished, climber. It was awarded to me for the way I would navigate talus. In those days, I had never heard of "trail names" so I just accepted it as a nickname in the same vein as "slim" or "red" or "s fer b".

I don't consider myself to be a through-hiker in the PCT/long trail sense; the JMT is long enough for me. So, Pika is just a name I respond to the same way I do Chuck. The name Pika has, however, long outlasted my climbing career.

As a thru hiker (AT) I tried to use my own name. My contention was that I had been hiking under my own name for (at that point)close to fifty years, and hadn't had any problems so why change.

Nevertheless, It wasn't long before the youngsters gave me one: Antique Roadshow.Surprisingly, it wasn't my age, it was the age of my gear on that first trip. Virtually all of it was at least 20 years old.

To my great shock and chagrin, on the second trip (ten years later) A guy in a gear store recognized me and announced the name to the ten or fifteen other through hikers who were in the store, so I had to endure it again.

Some thru hikers (especially the young ones) pick a name before they start in order to stave off an assigned name. It does not always work though.

best, jcp

Been away on a biking trip ...

If you thru-hike the PCT or AT, there's a kind of pressure to get a trail name early on. In fact, I've known multiple people with a two-initial trail name where the first letter is 'J'. They spent so long saying their name is "Just Bob", or "Just Fred" or whatever, that eventually they give up and become "JB" or "JF".

In the first few weeks of the PCT or AT, people are constantly talking about trail names and gear. At some point, those topics get old, such that a month or more along the way if you give some fairly outrageous trail name, other hikers will just accept it and start calling you that, you no longer tend to go through the whole "How did you get your trail name" rigamarole.

I guess I'd also say that you can typically tell when someone has picked their own trail name. If you're going to pick one, at least to use in a long distance hiking community context, I suggest that you don't pick something that sounds too, well, "elevated", poetic, or long. I.e., instead of a name like "Floats on the Ethereal Breeze Above the Misty Mountains", go with something much shorter. Say, one word, one-to-three syllables. And not a name from any popular fiction work.
If you do go for a multi-word name, just expect that the trail community is going to shorten it for you, and not necessarily in the most flattering way. Or do as some prefer, wait for the trail community to name you (with something you can live with).

On the CDT there was a mild trend for folks to give up their trail name and ask to just be called by their real name. Trail names get used there more just because it's the name that others already know you by.

I don't see a reason to care all that much about trail names. Though it can be nice to disambiguate on a well populated trail (i.e., there might be a number of guys named 'Brian', but not too many named 'Gadget').

'Gadget' seems much preferable to 'Gidget'.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George got a nickname at work he didn't like and used the rest of the episode to try to get his co-workers to call him something else.

I guess if you want to be called T-bone you need to start out at the beginning of your hike with a weeks worth of steak.