I have a mild nickel allergy, so in order for me to play clarinet (and not be itchy), the keys have to be plated with another metal. The most common of these non-nickel key platings is sterling silver, and I always made sure to get the school’s silver-plated clarinet in my hands before anyone else (at least until I got my own). That’s when my classmates started jokingly calling me Sterling, and around then is when I thought I could adopt it as a pseudonym of sorts.