What makes a good Peloton User Name?
Many riders or runners who have been on a Peloton bike or treadmill have had the experience of looking at a leaderboard and being jealous of a great name. This is no different than other social media or gaming platforms that require a unique avatar name or handle. Although choosing the right name can be daunting, spending some time curating it can help stand out from the crowd. A unique and memorable name is more likely to get a shout out from an instructor or be recognizable to friends in the same class.
Once you have read up on choosing all of your Peloton accessories and figured out your setup, next up is picking a user name. A great user name has a few qualities.
Uniqueness
Of course each name must be unique, but memorable ones will even avoid common similarities. The difference between RiderGal85 and RiderGuy92 isn’t enough to really stand out. If using numbers it is helpful to make them meaningful or recognizable. Sure many millennials will add a birth year somewhere within a name (a legacy hold over for many who grew up knowing what a/s/l? means in a chat room), but it is not the only way to incorporate a number.
Numbers can be used to phonetically alter a name. I_8_Pie is read as “I ate pie” and plays to the common theme of explaining why you may be riding a bike. Nowhere2HideNow also uses a number in an intimidating name and helps shorten an otherwise unavailable name due to the character count limit (15).
Others use numbers to tie them to recognizable characters. Famously this is used to show allegiance to popular sports stars. Some even use their own number, Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback of the chiefs is known to have a public Peloton username of “2PM” where the 2 also represents his jersey number on the Chiefs.
Readability of a Leaderboard Name
Beyond the uniqueness of a name, a good moniker will be easy to read. Comprehension is about both the structure of the letters themselves as well as how quickly others can interpret any obvious words.
Spaces are not allowed in Peloton usernames so one of the best ways to ensure your name is readable is with either underscores or CamelCase lettering. For example here are three ways to spell construct effectively the same name:
allasone – This format uses no spaces and no capitals so it is hard to parse the word breaks. If could be an obvious name for someone same Al Lasone, but without any breaks it is hard to tell.
AllAsOne – Formatting with CamelCase highlights with a capital letter where there should be a syllable or word break. Because leaderboard names are not case sensitive, this is actually the same name as the previous option. When inputting a name, if you use capital letters it will be saved that way, this is not done automatically as the software would have no way of knowing for sure where the intended break is.
all_as_one – Underscores are the other option. They do take up a character, so are not ideal for longer usernames, but if you want a somewhat popular combination of words it may be a way to get a unique character combination of an otherwise obvious name.
Puns In a User Name
User names can be descriptive, but funny ones often use puns. In part this is because of character limitations, you can’t tell a full joke in 15 characters but you can drop in an apt pun.
Check out the leaderboards long enough and you are bound to see some good puns. Many of them will make reference to eating, cycling, running, going fast, or even going slow. Some opt to poke fun at the user themselves, which tends to be more generally accepted. Since usernames never allow for additional context, and there is no profile description or ability to rename workouts so the data linked to your profile is limited in its ability to explain a user name.
Puns also are a great way to take advantage of one of the uses of usernames, to motivate others. A good pun can be the point of fun or levity during a long and hard class. Shout outs from instructors also sometimes showcase this with the best puns often getting highlighted during a class since they have the same humorous effect on instructors as they do on other riders. Personally, the best puns I have seen though work at incorporating a personal name into a username.
Names first and surnames including Rob, Nguyen, Turner, Strong, Wun all provide great options. Sadly none of the Peloton instructors have taken advantage of their strong pun opportunities. Instructors like Ben “Alldis”, Jess “King”, and Andy “Speer” have ideal names for integrating into puns but went instead with the Peloton norms of more direct naming. They are, respectively, BenAlldis, jesskingnyc, and AndySpeer23.
Usernames of Peloton Instructors and Celebrities?
For inspiration it is fun to look at what others have done. Sadly, if you are reading this on mobile or desktop you can not scan the leaderboards since they are only available when directly using the bike or tread. Still there are a handful of outlets that have collected the publicly shared names of Peloton Instructors and Celebrities alike.
How often can you change your Peloton user name?
For the most part you can change your Peloton user name as often as you would like. Certainly there is some chance that if you change it too much in a short period of time that the leaderboards may not immediately update, but there is no other limit. The restrictions for user names are mostly on its format and uniqueness. The official limitations are:
- You may only use alphanumeric characters, basically just letters A-Z or numbers.
- Your username can have a maximum of 15 total characters (no spaces are allowed)
- A username can must be unique
To make a change to your user name login to your Peloton account. From Desktop, look in the top right of the screen for the three dots, expand the menu and then click “Preferences”.
From there you need to look for the “USERNAME” field and type in a new one. If you add in any disallowed characters an alert will pop up. Once you are done typing. Hit save and if the name is unique it will be accepted.