When I joined SL way back in 2008, five years after it started in 2003, choosing a name was different from what it is now. Your first name could be whatever you wanted it to be, you choose it, make it up, whatever, a normal regular name, one with random letters or numbers, or a combination of both, a made up word, you could even name yourself after an object, wherever your imagination took you at the time of signing up, but once you’d done it that was it, your name, no changing unless you got a new account.
Your last name was chosen from a select list provided by SL at the time of signing up. Some of the names would have been familiar like real-world ones, while others completely made-up. This list every now and then be changed, some surnames would drop off it and new ones added. Whatever you chose that would be your inworld name, as in my name, ‘Anan Eebus’. The surname ‘Eebus’ wasn’t around very long I’d discovered and was lucky to choose it from the list at the time as now when I search there aren’t many with it. These names are now sometimes referred to as ‘legacy names’, so not only have I got a legacy name still, it’s an unusual one in that not many people ever chose it.
After a few years of being on SL, they changed the naming process to you only choosing one name, your first name essentially, which could be a single name or a compound of say what you might want your first and last name to be. Additionally they took away the last names lists completely making all new accounts be whatever you chose as your first followed by ‘resident’. For example, my name would have looked like this: “Ananeebus resident”. As it is I think I was lucky to get in before they made that change. I thought this was a bit silly, and I think it was at a time they were trying to take more control or something. I actually have no clear idea why they did it.
Moving on yet another couple of years and they have since abandoned the ‘resident’ surname in favour of you just choosing one name, whatever you want but it can only be a single word with no spacing, hence, if I were to join now it would be ‘Ananeebus’, and nothing else, or of course I could just have gone with ‘Anan’ as long as there wasn’t another already inworld with that name. That’s always been a rule, no two avatars with the same account name.
Just prior to dropping the 'resident' in favour of what we have now for new accounts they introduced an additional naming option, that is an ‘alias’. This is a name you can unofficially change you name too in your account so your avi, or avatar, will show up as that name inworld even though officially you’re still the name you originally signed up with. This means you can one more have two names, or more, and even symbols in your name, you can in fact if you know how get quite wacky and inventive with it or choose one which fits you character better for inworld roleplay.
I’m still pleased I have an original name, or what they call now a legacy name, and I’ve never used the alias option as yet, I’ve felt no need. Some people change theirs as often as every week, just for fun or for whatever, perhaps just being bored or a bad case of nominative attention deficit disorder. Those who do can make it tricky when looking for them in your friends list to IM or something as when they use an alias it shows up first and can take an age to work out who is who.
So that’s two things I’ve never changed since I joined, my name and the colour of my hair, it’s always been blue, since my second week here I may choose different styles on and off but the colour remains an obvious shade of particular blue.
~Anan Eebus
