My name is Joel N. Weber II. For some reason, I get annoyed when people call me Joel N. Weber, or Joel Weber II, though I'm perfectly happy to be called Joel or Joel Weber. Indeed, usually I don't have the patience to say `Joel N. Weber II' when I'm telling someone my name over the phone.
We happen to be at a wierd time in history when people choose their own usenames. It would be somewhat unsurprising if my children's usernames are usenames I choose when making their accounts, rather than usernames they choose. But it currently is the case that a lot of people out there on the Net have choosen their own username.
These days, people call me either Joel or nemo in person; which one is used partly dependant on how often they see my username on a computer system. nemo also is a somewhat more unique name, although that doesn't seem to matter very much.
For some reason, I choose sometime before 1995 to use `nemo' as my canonical username. There are two interesting things about `nemo': first, it is a latin word which means `nobody'. Second, it happens to be the name of a character in the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (Of course, Jules Verne probably knew about the Latin meaning in choosing a name for his caharcter.)
I've always liked 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, though it has never been especially clear to me exactly why I like it. The Captain Nemo in the book is one who is alienated by the world, and succeeds in finding a way to (mostly) avoid the insanity of the world, and I think I am one who feels that the world is insane in a similar fashion. So I suppose that I like the book because I can identify with the characters in some sense, and I suspect that some of this was initially subconcious.