My avatar and name (Deimos) are what I use on half dozen other forums (fora?).
Because most of those forums are male dominated and there existed the potential to be quite hostile toward women attempting to participate, I initially chose both a hand drawn avatar (not my art tho'... recognize it?) and an ambiguous name, until such time as I became established (and accepted) on the forum.
Worked out pretty well. A lot of shocked forum-ites (as I like to call them) when they found out I wasn't a "bloke" as one youngster said, and some pretty funny responses (no hostile ones), and no problem being accepted.
My Steampunk name (under the avatar) was "picked" by a random steampunk name generator, using numbers associated with one's sex, birth date and age.
I like the name that was generated for me, and will happily reply to either address, or no address at all.