Why is your CS email “krelth?”

It is an odd email name and I’ve been asked this question a lot. I was at CMU as an undergrad in 1990. CMU was ahead of the times since every undergraduate got an account, however, you had no choice over your ID and got a semi-random string of letters. I was assigned “jb8n.”

At one point I started working in computer science and was allowed to select my account name. As a nineteen year old, I selected a way k00l name, “krelth;” the name of my (then current) Dungeons and Dragons character.

I left CMU for graduate school.

Fast forward 7 years.

I returned to CMU to work as a postdoc, and found that:

1. My old CS account still existed.

2. No, they would not create a new account or change the name of my existing account. Correction: if my name were to legally change they would change my account name.

Rather irritating as “krelth” is not exactly a professional address, it raises a lot of questions, and the settings saved with the account weren’t quite compatible with how the system now works.