I basically made up my name with twelve years of age while creating yet another character for DSA, some roleplaying system. As I had no friends, and even more currently was travelling by ship down that river seperating Germany and France, all I could really do was creating characters.
Then, soon after we got home again, I discovered the magical wonderland that is known as the internet, and quickly made it to a chatroom related to a particular disney cartoon I like pretty much. I first used another name, Xiang, supposedly a chinese word, that I took from a book by Michael Stackpole, but forgot the password to that one rather quick. Thus I used Loriel. Which stuck.
Sometimes playing less fantasy-like games, Loriel does not really fit, thus I assembled another name, 'Loren Kalmar', out of parts from the same book series that I took my very first name from. Lor(iel|en) are pretty similar, too.
I have started to more often use my real name, shortened to Ben, in some less RPy occassions, but I still like the sound of Loriel, although many people seem to think of it as female or shampooish
