What does self-made mean?
You're 10 Merit away from being Self-made Legendary too.I think I'm the one who came up with this term. The oldest reference I can find is this:
With the obvious exceptions of theymos and satoshi, LoyceV might well be the first "regular" forum user to break 1000 earned merits. Which, for anyone who joined the forum after merit was introduced, is now the threshold to attain Legendary rank. That's quite the achievement.
Since I realized that, it feels like it takes forever to get there. I plan to change my personal text to "Self-made Legendary" 
I later added this:
To sum up
theymos is Meta-made Legendary
LoyceV is Meta-made Legendary
hilariousetc is Meta-made Legendary
Last of the V8s is Speculation-made Legendary
achow101 is Self-made non-Meta Legendary
theymos is Meta-made Legendary
LoyceV is Meta-made Legendary
hilariousetc is Meta-made Legendary
Last of the V8s is Speculation-made Legendary
achow101 is Self-made non-Meta Legendary
Isn't every profile self - made?
In a way, yes. But it's also nice to show the difference between an account farmer and a user who earned his Merit. I think a Newbie with 20 earned Merit is much more impressive than a Legendary with 0 earned Merit.