why cant we use space in the name creation?

[acb14]

why cant we use space in the name creation?

[Alwin Alcott]

just because thats the system as used, at the time double names were abandoned, this system came in use.

[Bree Giffen]

My guess is that a space in name creation would allow people to create exactly similar names to the older name/surname. In-world a residents name appears above their head. A resident named Jane Doe appears as 'Jane Doe' while a resident named JaneDoe Resident appears as 'JaneDoe'. A space would allow a name Jane Doe Resident which appears in-world as 'Jane Doe' which will lead to lots of confusion.

To prevent name duplication I suppose the name creation would have to do a check against all of the older names which it currently does not. 

There may be some other database or programming restrictions that prevent adding spaces.

[Nova Convair]

That's how the system works.

Everybody has 3 Names:

Legacy Name
It's always firstname space lastname - ONE space
Example "Nova Convair" or "IamNew Resident"

Username
It's one name without any spaces
Example "nova.convair" or "iamnew"

Display Name
Your free choice with spaces and unicode letters
If you don't defined one it's the same as the Legacy Name without "Resident"

 

Legacy Name and Username are used in many scripts and parts of the system and depend on their present form. You can ask for a change but you will not be heared.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

A bit of name history.

When people that have legacy names chose their name, they could have a first name of their choosing but couldn't use any last name they wanted.  They chose from a limited list of last names that LL provided. Many of the early names weren't RL last names but were made up by someone in the lab, many of them funny or ridicules. 

The list changed as only so many people with a particular last name were allowed.  At first the limit was only 150, because of a theory that 150 is the maximum number of people a person can remember and remain familiar with..  Some names were never chosen and some only chosen rarely with as little as 1 person having that last name.  That limit increased a bit as time went on and more people created accounts. By the fall of 2006 the limit was increased to 1000 and eventually more than that.  Toward the end, Gossipgirl was the most popular name and there were 163,164 allowed.

Once whatever LL established as the limit at time had been reached it was removed from the list and a new last name became available.  Some names only stayed on the list 1 day others over a year.  When you chose your first and last name combo, it checked to see if anyone else was named that, and if so, you had to choose again.

Starting In 2010, people chose only their first name and got a last name of "Resident" and a short time later Resident was no longer shown on the name tag, just the first name.  Display names were introduced in November of that year.  

The use of only one name and the ability to use a Display name were LL's answer to the many requests to change names that they got since the beginning, particularly from people who were partnered.  The problem with user name changes is that all the SL databases use the user name instead of a numerical key to link everything about a particular avatar together.  This was a serious design flaw from the beginning but I don't think in the early days LL thought there would be so many people signing up for a SL.  According to LL, it would take too much time and too many resources to change a name, so it is not allowed.

 

[sirhc DeSantis]

Some very good answers below. Boils down to some bright spark thought was a good idea to ... something never made clear.

Look up m or rodvik .. except you can't

yours,

ee154d0d-ab05-449f-9ff0-8d0767c904c7 and always

[acb14]

so 2 persons enriched this forum by saying it is how it is

1 person talks about name change requests instead of name creation (new names)

1 person believes the 3 above are helpful

and only 1 person guessed it has something to do with causing confusion or scam or griefing which makes sense but is still just a guess

 

is there no official statement from LL about this big change?

 

[Kelli May]

---

acb14 wrote:

so 2 persons enriched this forum by saying it is how it is

1 person talks about name change requests instead of name creation (new names)

1 person believes the 3 above are helpful

and only 1 person guessed it has something to do with causing confusion or scam or griefing which makes sense but is still just a guess

 

is there no official statement from LL about this big change?

 

---

It's not a change, it's how it has always been (does that make me a third person saying 'it is how it is'? Hey ho). Even when we had two-part names, the first name (the part we could choose for ourselves) couldn't have a space in it either. It looked like it had a space, but the space was a separator inserted by the system between the first name and the surname. As far as the system is concerned, I'm firstname "Kelli", secondname "May". or username "kelli.may'. Note that they are also case insensitive as far as log-ins are concerned, but case sensitive in terms of display.

I can guess at some technical reasons why. Apart from the scamming/griefing concerns, spaces are often restricted in computer data because they are used as separators/delimiters. When a system parses a string of data, it breaks it down into chunks based on certain characters - spaces, dots, dashes etc. So you don't want separator characters such as spaces in unexpected places in the data. 

If you're expecting LL to comment on the reason here, you're likely to be disappointed. Sometimes they post here, usually they don't.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

---

acb14 wrote:

so 2 persons enriched this forum by saying it is how it is

1 person talks about name change requests instead of name creation (new names)

1 person believes the 3 above are helpful

and only 1 person guessed it has something to do with causing confusion or scam or griefing which makes sense but is still just a guess

 

is there no official statement from LL about this big change?

 

---

and the OP seems to think its odd that people write what they think it is.... how strange on a forum, what a weird world we live in

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

acb14 wrote:

so 2 persons enriched this forum by saying it is how it is

1 person talks about name change requests instead of name creation (new names)

1 person believes the 3 above are helpful

and only 1 person guessed it has something to do with causing confusion or scam or griefing which makes sense but is still just a guess

 

is there no official statement from LL about this big change?

 

---

Second Life names consist of two parts:

1) the "first name" field, which can be up to 32 letters or numbers but not any sort of symbol.

and

2) the "last name," which is a number that's looked up in a database. With traditional names, in order for you to be able to see what someone's name is you need to have an up-to-date database loaded into your viewer. By late 2010 there were over 10,000 last names in this database. Around then, presumably to keep this database from getting larger and larger and harder to download, Linden Lab decided to discontinue adding last names. Everyone who joined Second LIfe after November 2011 has the same number in this last name field (10327 if you want to know.) This corresponds to "Resident" in the database. Things were re-written so that many functions of the viewer ignored the last name if the last name value was 10327 but older scripts still looked for the last name field so this is why new accounts sometimes say "Resident" after them and sometimes don't.  I imagine if someone at Linden Lab was having a bad day and had access to the database they could change "Resident" to "Whackadoodle" and all the "Resident" last names would instantly change to that.

You can't put a space in the first name field because many programs HATE spaces in names. Usually when a computer sees a space it assumes that the thing after the space is something completely different from the thing before. For instance, most DOS applications used the underscore instead of the space to display two words in a title. When Rodvik Linden started (after  the change was made) there was talk about allowing the equivalent of a space in the "first name" field but nothing came of it. Since any discussion of Second Life last names quickly descends in to a hissy fit I imagine the Lab decided interally, "Why should we lift one finger to change this after all the yowling?

This meeting discusses how the database works some:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Beta_Server_Office_Hours/Minutes/2012-03-08

 

[Nova Convair]

---

acb14 wrote:

so 2 persons enriched this forum by saying it is how it is

1 person talks about name change requests instead of name creation (new names)

1 person believes the 3 above are helpful

and only 1 person guessed it has something to do with causing confusion or scam or griefing which makes sense but is still just a guess

 

is there no official statement from LL about this big change?

 

---

LOL

This is the general discussion forum so it's meaningless what you expect. The people will discuss or write what they want.

And of course there is an official statement about this change. You can start searching for this whenever you want. It's quite some years ago though.

[Penny Patton]

As others have pointed out, it's best to think of your username as your login and then set a "Display Name" as your in-world name. Display Names offer a lot more freedom, including the use of spaces. I'm not sure why some viewers still insist on putting usernames in the avatar nametags by default but you can easily hide them while still keeping them visible for important transactions.