Among players in the Korean professional leagues, standouts will invariably earn themselves a nickname to go with their real name (used by the leagues for records) and in-game alias. Some examples are:
Lee Jae Dong (Jaedong) “The Legend Killer”
Lee Yeong Ho (Flash) “The Ultimate Weapon”
Ma Jae Yoon (savior) “The Maestro”
Lim Yo Hwan (SlayerS_Boxer) “The Emperor”
Particularly good or entertaining foreign players also receive nicknames:
Greg Fields (EGIdrA) “The Gracken”
Chris Loranger (EG.HuK) “HuK Norris”
Units (Brood War):
Zergling is usually shortened to just "'ling". Zerglings with the metabolic boost move speed upgrade are called "Speedlings", and when the adrenal glands attack speed upgrade is added they're called "Cracklings" because they fight as if they're high on crack.
Ultralisks are "Ultras", "Imbalisks" (Imbalanced-Ultralisks), or "Cows" (they're big quadrupeds with hooves, and curved blades on their arms that stick out on either side like cow horns).
In Starcraft II casts, Winter Starcraft calls ultras with the Anabolic Synthesis move speed upgrade "Usain Boltralisks" after the famous sprinter Usain Bolt.
Mutalisks are shortened to "Mutas".
Hydralisks are shortened to "Hydras".
Battlecruisers are nicknamed "Flying Cows" by some in reference to the ultralisk's nickname, as both have a massive amount of HP. Similarly, they may be called Cattlebruisers.
"Bastard Probe", as probes are arguably the most annoying unit in the game to deal with, and certainly the most annoying worker. Their regenerating shields and high acceleration make it possible to keep scouting probes alive in an enemy base for a while, and only one probe is needed to plant multiple structures. A probe can attack workers; block the construction of an expansion; "steal" a gas geyser by building an assimilator on it; plant a "Manner Pylon" in the mineral line to prevent workers from gathering (or even trap them bewteen the pylon and the mineral patches); put a "Pylon Prison" in front of a building to trap any units that spawn from it; or execute a Cannon Rush.
"Darchons", short for Dark Archons.
Carriers are called "Cars" (Short for carriers) or "Bananas" (They're long and yellow). Amongst Russian-speaking players, it's also common to call them "Loafs", for their shape and colour.
"M&Ms": Marines & Medics. A devastating combination of units if used properly.
Joona Sotala (Serral), a Finnish Zerg Player, is also called "The Finnisher" and "The Finnish Phenom" in reference to his nationality, and "The King of the Circuit" for his sweep of the WCS tournament circuit.
Sasha Hostyn (Scarlett), a Canadian Zerg Player, is also called "The Queen of Blades" (Sarah Kerrigan's epithet in the game) for her Zerg prowess and being one of the few female pros, though she says she doesn't like this nickname.
Riccardo Romiti (Reynor), an Italian Zerg player, is also called "The Itallian Stallion" and "Little Caesar" in reference to his nationality and his Teen Genius talent.
Florencio, an American who started with Protoss but also plays Zerg and Terran, is "The Sewer Mermaid". Commentator PiG gave Florencio this nickname for constantly using "dirty" and outrageous cheese strategies that he seems to pull out of the depths of the sewers.
Kim Dae Yeob (Stats), a Protoss player, is called "The Shield of Aiur" (the name of Artanis's mothership in the Wings of Liberty level "In Utter Darkness") in reference to his defensive play style.
Gabriel Raffaele Segat (HeRoMaRinE), a Terran player from Germany, is called "Big Gabe". Since 2020, the ESL Open Cup Europe has also been known as the "Big Gabe Weekly" for the fact that Big Gabe would just come in every week and win it for very long streaks.
Koh Byung-jae (GuMiho), a South Korean Terran player, was nicknamed "Towel Terran" by Artosis because he has a condition which causes his hands to sweat excessively, and therefore plays with a towel over his mouse.
Units
Zerglings with the move speed upgrade, but not the attack speed upgrade are called Speedlings or Slings for short, while fully upgrade zerglings remain Cracklings despite Blizzard’s best efforts to change the lexicon.
Zerg units without their movement speed upgrades are called "slow 'lings", "slow roaches", and so on.
Banelings are called "Blings" or "Banes".
When cast, Infested Terran eggs (eventually removed from multiplayer) lay on the ground for some seconds before hatching, and are referred to as "Beach Balls". Unlike actual beach balls, these can seriously mess with unit pathing.
In addition to being shortened to "Mutas", Mutalisks are sometimes referred to as "T-Rexes" or "Dinosaurs" in Starcraft II because of how the wireframe icon looks in the user interface; its right wing looks like a dinosaur tail because of the edge-on angle it's shown from, while its actual tail looks like the dinosaur's leg, and its right wing looks like the dinosaur's head. They are also "The Flappy Boys" for their bat-like animated flapping wings.
Overlords are "Ovies", and with the ventral sacs upgrade to carry units they become "Dropperlords".
Spine Crawlers and Spore Crawlers can be shortened to just "Spines" and "Spores".
A bunch of building nicknames are just shortening the name so it's quicker to say. Barracks may be shortened to "Rax", Engineering Bay to "Engie Bay", Orbital Command to "Orbital", Spawning Pool to "Pool", Hatchery to "Hatch", Evolution Chamber to "Evo Chamber", Gateway to "Gate", Robotics Facility to "Robo", and so on. Refinery, Extractor, and Assimilator are the proper names of each race's vespene gas-extracting building, but it's quicker to just call any of these "a gas".
The Broodlings thrown by the Brood Lords are called "The Nibbly Boys" by Winter Starcraft for their method of attack.
Whichever Queen is the center of attention is called "Brenda" and characterized as a grumpy Apron Matron; the darts she shoots at flying enemies are called "Knitting Needles", and a group of Queens is "Brenda and her Knitting Crew"; members of the knitting crew include "Karen" and "Susan".
Zealots with their Charge upgrade are called "Chargelots" or "Speedlots".
While Sentries themselves don’t have many nicknames, their most useful ability has lent itself to other nicknames – Nukes are known as the "Terran Forcefield" (due to them being more useful as a way to make the opponent stay back for 15 seconds than a way to actually deal damage), and in the right situation, Fungal Growth is the "Zerg Forcefield".
The ranged attack of the Sentry is called the "Tickle Beam" because it barely does any damage, being an afterthought compared to the Sentry's spell abilities.
High Templars are shortened to "HTs", or sometimes just "Templars".
The energy blasts that the High Templars shoot out of their hands when they auto attack are called "water balloons" because of the psi energy’s resemblance to splashing water, and because this attack barely inflicts more damage than throwing water balloons at the enemy would. Indeed, this weak, ranged auto attack was added in a patch for the sole purpose of preventing the Squishy Wizard High Templar from suicidally gliding into the enemy army whenever a player attack-moved with High Templars selected, which these units used to do when they had no means of attacking except their spells.
Dark Templar are called "DTs", "Deets", "Dank Templar", or "Cape Boys". Their Shadow Stride Ability is often just called "Blink" or "DT Blink" because it works exactly the same as a Stalker's Blink ability.
Due to their enormous, bulbous head and the way they tend to gently nudge each other when clumped up, Colossi are known as Walking Blimps. The extremely tall yellow mechs are also known as "Giraffes" and "Laser Giraffes", due in large part to Life's a Glitch TV, while GiantGrantGames refers to them as "long Zealots". Finally, a group of them can be called "'lossi" for short.
Warp Prisms were called "paper planes" early in the Wings of Liberty era because they had 100 health and only 40 shields, making them overly delicate and easy to kill. Patch 1.4 made them far more viable by buffing their shields from 40 to 100; eventually, patch 3.8.0 made a slight tweak by reducing their health from 100 to 80.
Void Rays were once known as "Void Ras" due to professional player White-Ra's tendency to use them during the beta.
Disruptors are shortened to "'ruptors".
The Corrupter's Caustic Spray ability added in Legacy of the Void is often referred to as "Corruptor Piss" in less-formal environments.
When an Orbital Command is destroyed, one of the parts that gets thrown by the explosion animation is called the "hairdryer" because of its resemblance to that appliance.
"Jimmy" is Lowko's nickname for the quintessential Terran Marine.
Harstem is in the habit of simply calling Hellions "cars". There isn’t really any danger of confusion with Protoss Carriers, since the Carrier’s Starcraft I nicknames are generally not used in casts of Starcraft II games.
The Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade to the Hellion/Hellbat's damage against light units is simply called "Blue Flame," because it changes the color of the vehicle’s flamethrower from orange to blue. Hellions with this upgrade are called "Blue Flame Hellions".
Battlecruisers are abbreviated as BCs, or alternatively referred to by the spoonerism "Cattlebruiser".
A Medivac carrying eight marines is commonly called an Octodrop.
Workers in general and Terran SCVs in particular are simply "The Boys", especially when in the context of being pressed into combat.
"Cheeto Dust" or "Dorito Dust" is what Winter Starcraft calls the orange coloring that appears on units struck by the Raven's anti-armor missle.
Cyclones are shortened to "'clones".
Tactics and situations
"Deathball" refers to any sufficiently large cluster of units that simply attack-moves across the map to destroy everything. Can be applied to any race, but most commonly associated with Protoss.
Some tactics involving Banelings have their own nicknames:
“Bane Rain” is the tactic of using overlords with ventral sacs to drop banelings on top of the enemy, frequently their mineral line.
A "Baneling Bust" is using a large number of banelings to quickly break open the wall-off of a Terran or Protoss base. It's not an ideal tactic, as the number of banelings required makes for a cost-inefficent trade, but sometimes you're just so desperate or impatient to break an opponent who's turtling.
Some tactics involving Overlords have their own nicknames:
A "Pervert Pillar" is any pillar-like object around the opponent's base whose top is inaccessible to ground units, which an overlord can float above while keeping an eye on the enemy. The pillar acts as high ground, and prevents any ground units from shooting the overlord unless they have a scan or a flyer of their own to grant them vision.
A "Doom Drop" refers to loading up a large number of Overlords with upgraded Zerglings and dumping them on the opponent's head.
When using their Lair-tech ability to generate creep, Overlords appear to spew purple liquid out of their undersides. Needless to say, the scatological jokes abound, chief among them, "Diarrhea".
"Shield-Toss" refers to a Protoss who plays cautiously and defensively in order to build up their strength, while "YOLO-Toss" is one who tries to grab the initiative and deal damage to their opponent as quickly as possible. The fact that Protoss is the race with the most expensive tech and units essentially forces a player to choose between these two very distinct styles, unlike Terran or Zerg who have more flexibly and cannot be so easily categorized.
A "Super Pylon" is a pylon which stands next to a Gateway or a Nexus, which reduces the time it takes to warp in units within its psionic matrix. Warp-ins that use a non-super pylon are called "slow warp-ins" because they take a lot longer.
"Skytoss" is the nickname for a late game Protoss army that's heavily weighted towards air units, such as void rays, carriers, tempests, and maybe even a mothership.
The "Archon Toilet" was a tactic in the Wings of Liberty version of multiplayer which involved using the Mothership's Vortex ability in combination with Archon splash damage. Vortex was a spell resembling a black hole which sucked any units that got too close into the hole at its center; this sucking action combined with the swirling energy funnel resembled a toilet flushing. The vortex would prevent units inside from doing anything or being attacked for 20 seconds, then spit them out again. The intended use of this spell was to, for example, temporarily remove half of your enemy's army from play so that you could defeat the two halves in detail. That's why it was often in the enemy's interest to deliberately send the rest of their army into the vortex after, in order to protect them and make sure their army would all come back out at the same time. However, if the mothership player had a bunch of Archons prepared and sent them into the vortex/toilet with the enemy, the Archons would zap the enemy to smithereens with their splash damage at the instant when all the units started to come out of the vortex, during which the enemy units and Archons would all be compressed together in an overlapping splash damage zone. Patch 1.3.0 nerfed this tactic out of existence by giving the units coming out of the vortex 1.5 seconds of Mercy Invincibility, which gave them time to spread out again and not take splash damage from all the archons at once. Eventually the Mothership had the Vortex spell replaced with a different ability.
A "Turtle Terran" is a player who just stays at home and digs in, using the strong defensive measures available to Terran (such as bunkers, missile turrets, Planetary Fortresses, Siege Tanks, and Liberators) to make it very annoying for the opponent to try and break in.
Shoutcaster Husky Starcraft called opening with one barracks, one factory, and one starport a "Destiny Cloudfist Build" because he thought the normal build name of "1-1-1" was not exciting enough.
Using a Drop Ship to move units up to high ground or vice versa is called “Elevatoring”.
Similarly to Brood War, the Marine / Marauder / Medivac unit composition is called “MMM”. It's also referred to as the "Bioball" (a deathball of biological units).
"Bio" is a Terran play style focused on the MMM unit composition, while "Mech" play is an alternative that focuses on mechanical units such as hellions, cyclones, siege tanks, and Thors.
A "Maka Rax", named after Korean Terran player Maka, is a barracks built in a strange place where it won't be immediately scouted, but close enough to the home base that it can be floated back in if needed. This can trick the opponent into thinking a proxy barracks rush is happening, so that they’ll go into panic mode over a false alarm.
"Battlemech" is the name of a high-mobility mech composition based on cyclones and hellions, which is especially good at countering Nydus Worms and Swarm Hosts.
The Liberator's circular kill-zone in Defender mode is often referred to as a "freedom zone" or a "liberation zone"; Winter Starcraft calls a bunch of overlapping liberators zones "The Venn Diagram of Freedom". Furthermore, since defender mode works like the siege mode of siege tanks, players use the same verbs to talk about "sieging" and "un-sieging" their Liberators.
A "Parade Push" is an offensive in which the attacker has a stretched-out stream of units moving across the map, with newly produced units being rallied to reinforce the attack.
Winter calls it a "Venn Dia-Scan" when a Terran player uses multiple Orbital Command scans in a small area, since it results in overlapping circles.
"Artosis Pylon" is a single pylon powering up multiple key buildings (so shutting it down would shut down the entire infrastructure); a newbie mistake. Term was coined by IdrA, who said it as a joke during one of his casts, referencing how the player named Artosis once made a similar mistake.
The "Tarson medal" is mockingly awarded to a Terran player who lets a Command Center or Orbital Command get destroyed by units with no anti-air attack, especially if they’re zerglings. Given that those buildings can lift off, it usually can only happen if the Terran player is too slow to react or simply forgets. Named after the Polish player Tarson, who was far from the first to make such a mistake but is nevertheless the most (in)famous for doing it.
