Who coined MOC?

[EamonnMR]

For years I assumed 'My Own Creations' was a section of the Lego club mag, but I wanted to verify that and... low and behold, the section was called "Maniac Madness" and "Cool Creations" during the years I would have read it. So, where does this term come from? Was it alway AFOL jargon, or was it used in official TLG communications first? Anyone know?

[JesseNight]

I have no confirmed answer... nor can I find anything about it.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it just came from common talk. Like someone liking a set and the other saying "It's my own creation." and it being so common, it became a thing?

[EamonnMR]

It's not a natural phrasing in any English dialect I'm familiar with. I can't imagine people saying it casually. 'My Own <noun>' isn't a common construction and 'creation' isn't usually used to describe the type of thing a MOC is. But dialects change over time!

I tried looking for some of the oldest threads on this site. Here's one from twenty years ago!

Sure enough, MOC being thrown around casually already. So the term must date back at least that far.

[icm]

I've been reading online Lego forums since 2002, and MOC has been used that entire time. I think MOC and SNOT date back to the earliest Lego web forums like Lugnet, which was already old and mostly abandoned by 2002.

[JesseNight]

It was only a wild guess, I'm not a native English speaker.
Interesting to hear SNOT dates back that far, I hadn't heard it until recently (but gotta admit I've been out of it some years). I'd guess modders used the technique much longer than TLG?

[Brickbuilder0937]

I just looked on the old Lugnet forums, and it was used at least as early as September 1998.

[AmperZand]

I’ve been an AFOL since 1993 and I believe the term SNOT pre-dates MOC. I can’t substantiate that or say precisely when either term was coined, but when I first saw ‘SNOT’ on LEGO usenet groups in the mid-to-late ‘90s, I already knew what it meant. I don’t think I saw ‘MOC’ until the late ‘90s or early ‘00s and had to check a glossary to find out its meaning.