Name Check

 Yeah, what is in a name?  Full Name, Default Name, Display Name, Username, Modern and Legacy... 
Originally when you joined Second Life, you chose a first name - it could be anything you wanted that wasn't wasn't too obviously rude or copyright infringing. Then you picked a last name from a list of about 50 possibles. This surname list was gradually refreshed, so that people who joined around the same time would often find they had 'cousins' - think of the improbable art trio of Selavy, Bryn and Saveme Oh, all linked by that surname, if not much else.  

It was a golden age of witty and punny creativeness, and a huge dose of crass daftness also. Many of the Last Names invited a play on words, and people rose to the challenge with great choices like AM Radio, Hok Wakawaka, or Rolling Shuffle. I bet you can remember a few good ones, put them in the Comments if you want. 

It's painless and quick to change display names in SL

So far in Second Life's impressive 20 year lifespan, there have been over 11,300 Last Names (here's a list of them). That includes both the ones suggested by the Lindens, and custom names people have requested. Some of the earliest Last Names were Baskerville, Prudhomme, Jetaime, Sideways, and Binder. Interestingly in the first four years of SL, only 360 different Last Names were available, each being retired after a few days or weeks, apparently at whim.
Back in 2010 some big name changes happened in Second Life. New account holders had to pick just one name, and whenever legacy form-filling required a second name, they all used the same one - 'Resident'. 

To put it another way, you could say LindenLabs were monetizing the Last Name option, by allowing Premium players to mod their name for cash, while pushing basic account people into the fast-shrinking pool of cool single-shot names (omg now there could only be one Barbie and one Ken!). Fairly recently, the rules have changed and now even basic account holders can change their Legacy Name - at a cost of $50 dollars, real world cash, and even a Premium Member has to stump up forty bucks to do it. 

Olivia Bestlife... call me Liv

Lindens sort of dealt with the name drain by introducing the concept of Display Names. A name that was purely for casual and social use, that you could change yourself, inworld, without cost. 

This offered romantic possibilities. You can get the same surname as your significant other  (and ditch them quickly, too). Then there are all those interesting Unicode characters, the ones your see quite often in Gestures - there are almost 150,000 in Unicode 15.1 and even if the viewer doesn't like all of them it's certainly an upgrade from the 62 orthodox options - uppercase and lowercase letters, and the ten digits. Great news for anyone whose name includes an accent or diacritic. Now they could finally spell it right, or spell it fancy.

 For anyone determined to inflict their real-world name on the game, this change afforded the opportunity to proudly display it for free. And, of course, it was a boon for anyone who had given themselves an over-long, crass, or ridiculous name. Display Names meant they could fix the issue painlessly... although, well, maybe not, because your 'real name' is still visibly attached to everything you do, for obvious crime-stopping reasons.

All greyed out on OSgrid

But what about Opensim? Display Names are not an option, but that's not a huge hardship. Generally speaking Opensim people who began in SL have ported over their names, if they were fond of them. 

Enable View Display Names in your prefs
to see them on Mobius

It seems like most of the stupid names were, on the whole, jettisoned - ask yourself when was the last time you saw a truly bad name in opensim. And if circumstances or mood dictates that you need a new name, you can make a new avie, and since content is by and large free and freely moveable, the whole thing is at the cost of a few hours of transfers, not a fortune in Linden re-buys. 

Heck if it's your personal grid, or you have a nice friendly grid owner with time to spare, it's not that hard fix the issue in the console. 

And yet... curious. 

I asked Lone Wolf about the Display Name option, since Wolf Territories Grid is famous for the way you can modify your terrain, and even sim name, at the touch of a button. It's not at the top of his to do list, but...

Lone Wolf: the main focus I think at the moment is making everything work with dotnet, but it would be a fun feature for the future, and I would enjoy using it.

Snowy panorama on Mobius

One Opensim grid does allow for Display Names, and that's Mobius. Their annual Christmas Fishing game is up and running over on Green Hill Zone, so while looking for my rod and reel, I asked grid owner Royale Mobian about Display Names. When I first arrived, I couldn't see Royale's Display name.

Royale Mobian: yo, whats up

Thirza Ember: so... bizarreness, I can't see your Display Name. I have enabled them in the Preferences but I can't see yours.

Royale Mobian: you might need to clear cache and TP over. The viewer caches names, but I have an idea,  one sec

....a few moments later.....

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷: got the name update?

Thirza Ember: Wait, it's a bit dark let me turn up the sun a bit.... yessssssssssss ! Now I see the Display Name! How did you fix that?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷: yeah - you see, when you logged in OSGrid it pulled me from your friends list so it filled your cache with what OSGrid sees. Basically cus OSG doesn't have display names and we are friends is why it happened.

Thirza Ember:  aaah! so it's a cache issue and did you toggle it so i could see it?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷:  I just went in my profile and updated my display name to the same one I already had. I set my display name months ago so i was well past the 'one change per week' limit. 

Thirza Ember: - a sort of mega-toggle... thanks!

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷:  Anyone who has yet to meet me when they visit will see my Display Name if they have Display Name view enabled.

Thirza Ember: Mobius Grid started in 2014 but it was not until 2019 that you guys implemented Display Names. How come?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷 That's when we finally had someone who could. Ruby is the one who wrote the code for them.

Thirza Ember: why did you want to add this feature?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷: we wanted them because we want to match SL in features as closely as possible due to us having a focus on gaming. Opensim is missing a lot of SL features that make gaming easier. As well to better support the viewer

Thirza Ember: was it tough to do? Maybe that's why it's not been implemented elsewhere?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷:  From what Ruby said adding it was both simple and hard. Like it was very simple but very tedious due to how core wrote it. It appears in the codebase that core went out of their way to make adding display names difficult. I'm not 100% sure if they did, but would not be surprised.

Thirza Ember:  Does it have any security implications to the grid?
𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷:  No, it does not affect security in any form. 

Thirza Ember: If anyone is curious about it, is there a way they can see what Stolen Ruby did to make display names work?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷: Yes, the code is public on our Open-Consortium repro on github

Thirza Ember: So do your residents make a lot of use of this feature?

𝓡𝓸𝔂𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷: Yes! most of our active users use Display Names. it serves as a way for users to change their identity without needing a new account. if we can change our names irl, why not on opensim? Our residents use it for roleplays as well as various other self expression. They love it and so far the only complaint is the 1 week limit we have. While we can set it to anything we like, the viewer currently is hard coded to say one week.

Mobian Thirza with the Fishing Bot

 Don't forget you can HG over to Mobian, or make an account and have a fancy Display Name, and while there why not play the annual fishing game and win prizes. It's fun!
HG Address: main.mobiusgrid.us:8002