Bring Back Last Names!

[Venus Soyer]

I feel this would bring more money into LL coffers as well.

Bring back last names.

Charge a nominal fee to change their name IE If Joe Smith weds Mary Brown and she wants her last name changed to Smith. 

Maybe make it so it has to be a preexisting last name.

Have a waiting period or a minimum number of changes per week/month whatever, because at the rate some people in SL marry and divorce it would take a team of people just changing names! I'm not condemning anyone. You do your thing, I'll do mine.

With the percentage of weddings I have seen in my 10 years here, this could be a real money maker!

I may be a minority but Susie this week is Mary next week, Helen the next and Samuel the next....I'm getting older. I can't rememeber all this stuff.

So have mercy on an SL Sr Citizen and bring back last names PLEASE!

 

[Claireschen Hesten]

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Venus Soyer wrote:

 

Charge a nominal fee to change their name IE If Joe Smith weds Mary Brown and she wants her last name changed to Smith. 

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All Mary would have to do is change her display name (for free) from Mary Smith to Mary Brown or maybe make it double barreled and go Smith-Brown or Brown-smith 

LL bought in display names because many people wanted to be able to change their last name to reflect that of the person they partnered and creating a new account with the same last name was not easy especially if LL had discontinued offering that last name

[Prokofy Neva]

Yes, as an oldbie that came of age during the period when last names were available, I really love this feature.

First of all, it helps in trade-marking. Everyone knew what Chung real estate was or Fairchang engineering (a last name made up of two last names merged when these avatars married in real life).

Names were made up randomly, but they began to stick and be associated with certain historical eras of Second Life. If you ran into a Cellardoor, you know you were meeting an oldbie who likely made interesting things. A last name Neva meant you were not an oldbie in those years but today it may confer oldbie status.

I really don't like this "resident" stuff. All the scripted devices require that you take that first-name only of a person then add the name Resident to them as if they are all from the same tribe.

I think "first-name only" pushes people into these Jennifer123456 type of names that I find annoying. It also means you can't always tell tenants apart easily. It's hard to remember them. The tenants with distinctive last names you tend to remember better.

And display names are not the solution. First of all, they constantly change on some people. Secondly, they are not the system name that scripted devices like rental boxes and doors and security actually use, that a landlord actually sees. So from my perspective, it's worthless.

I don't understand what the big deal is with these names. The system already enables you to change your name on your avatar itself, and then bothers to make this change through your entire system of creations and your home page and everything else, it seems like a waste, even. If it can use resources to do THAT, why can't it deal with distinct last names? Every avatar is only a number in computer terms, that is given a lettered name on top of that UUID. So what's the big deal? Is this really a strain on the data base? 

Maybe Lindens got tired of making up the lists of last names -- they ran through everything, from Supreme Court justices in the US to Polish revolutionaries in the 18th century. But then they could also just let people make up their own last names, and thereby put in their real last names if they had a mind to. Again, a system that absorbs the strain of RENAMING everything even every 2 weeks on any given avatar choosing this surely can absorb customer-based user names or a changing generic list.

 

 

[Pamela Galli]

Ebbe has stated it will not happen.

[kenzie1770]

I am only 2 years old on sl and have heard great times about the good old days and would love the see more and better. But one thing I do here about is having last names and would be awesome instead of the resident on the end of the names now. thanks, Kenzie1770

[VittoriaL666]

You know, I, too would love to see last names make a comeback.  So many people seem to have the same or similar first names that I seem to get confused and think that they are referring to me, when in fact they are talking to Victoria or some other girl.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Sorry, this is not going to happen. 

Due to poor planning in the beginning of SL, everything connected to your account , including every item in  your inventory and every transaction you've made, is under your name not some number or other identifier.  That is why everyone has to have a unique user name and a name cannot be re-used if if the account is cancelled.  It's still recorded in LL's records.  To change your name all that stuff has to be changed and currently LL has no way to do it, and has decided that it's not feasible to create a way to do it probably because of the cost and time involved.

Also due to the above, they would not allow you to change your name.  Even if John Smith marries Mary Jones, what are the chances she may not get to be Mary Smith because someone already has that name?  Pretty high actually.  If they did allow you to add a last name, probably you'd also have a problem coming up with a unique name that has never been used by the tens of millions of people that have or had an account in SL.

This is why we ended up with display names rather than actual user name changes or allowing single name user names to add a name.

[Venus Soyer]

Thank you for that post. It sure cleared up a lot of things I was unaware of about names.

In retrospect, it would have nice to link everything to our UUID and not our name, but too late now!

I understand why they cannot change names now but still vote to bring last names back. Let them wear a flip title is they want their name to change every week!

[Sassy Romano]

Hmm, I'm not convinced here. Is there a reference that cites this because even the most basic junior db programmer knows to use unique keys and the most obvious unique key is the UUID.

 

Throw in the fact that LL can and do change people's names under certain circumstances and that kills the comment about things and transactions being referenced by username.

[Prisqua Newall]

What was the reason for removing last names anyway?

[Imaze Rhiano]

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Prisqua Newall wrote:

What was the reason for removing last names anyway?

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They wanted that newcomers would feel themself more comfortable - normally MMORPGs/Forums/Social media have only one user name (not first name/last name).

[BobbyGeorge]

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Prisqua Newall wrote:

What was the reason for removing last names anyway?

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Desperate attempt to claw in FB / Steam / other game users.

Agreed it sucks and was a bad, bad move. LL could change it tomorrow, but won't - they're scared of upsetting the 'Resident' users, who might rightly argue that they've spent X amount of Linden dollars building up inventories with goods they can't transfer, when they would have saved their money if they'd known surnames were making a comeback.

Also, although the surname cull seems relatively 'recent' to older residents, it was about six years ago. That's nearly as distant now as the creation of SL was to us in 2010.  

[Maelstrom Janus]

Yes I want to create a villainous doppelganger of me named Hugh......

 

 

:D

[Penny Patton]

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Prisqua Newall wrote:

What was the reason for removing last names anyway?

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It's not really as devious as others have pointed out.

Before Display Names it was impossible to change your name. You could request  name change through LL but most of the time these requests went unanswered. People really wanted the ability to change their names. Display names offered that ability.

The last name system also caused some problems for getting new users into SL. If someone tried to sign up for SL and couldn't find a name they liked, chances are they'd say "screw it" and leave SL behind before even logging in once.

Another issue is, only a limited number of lastnames were ever available at one time and SL long ago grew to the point where LL couldn't keep up with adding new last name options, so people were often forced to compromise their first name in order to get the last name they wanted.

 

 Personally, I don't want the old name system back, but I wish the SL viewer displayed Display Names by default instead of putting both usernames and display names over people's heads just to confuse the newbies. You can choose to hide usernames and only see them when it's important, such as money transactions and IM conversations.

[Claireschen Hesten]

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Penny Patton wrote:

The last name system also caused some problems for getting new users into SL. If someone tried to sign up for SL and couldn't find a name they liked, chances are they'd say "screw it" and leave SL behind before even logging in once.

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That's actually a very good point i can clearly remember when signing up the first time there was a long list of last names and most of them were Eastern European names i couldn't pronounce them let alone remember how to spell them for when i would have to log in the first time. I'm quite sure something like that would have put off people even completeing the sign up

[LunaAzulejo]

Ebbe is the enemy of the people.

 

Ending the use of last names created a class system. If Resident is your last name, then you're a newbie, with all the status that confers. \s :matte-motes-yawn:

[Penny Patton]

What viewers even show "Resident" as a last name? Users created after last names were phased out should appear as a single name with "Resident" only appearing in outdated or badly written scripts.

[Abby Heartsong]

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The last name system also caused some problems for getting new users into SL. If someone tried to sign up for SL and couldn't find a name they liked, chances are they'd say "screw it" and leave SL behind before even logging in once.

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I remember those days. Well, there was another problem: They used to send out an "Activation key" in an email, which you had to click before you could use your account. But many people didn't even get this activation email. Maybe that was the real reason why they never logged in. They simply weren't able to activate their account.

I know so, because i have experienced it myself, i tried several e-mail addresses but i never got this email. Maybe there was an error in the system, i don't know. And now there are atleast 5 different accounts of mine, which i never got to use because i wasn't able to activate them. They still show up in search though.

But one time i made it, and was able to register and activate an account with the last name "Alex", but i deleted that one in 2012 because of some drama, lol...

Maybe they should give new users the option to make up their own last names, if they want one. That would be much better.

When i registered my current account in 2012, i wanted a last name too, so i simply called myself "AbbyFraser" and my display name is "Abby Fraser". So that works just fine.

 

[Nikki Crosby]

Having been in SL for a while, I'm fine without the last names.  The convenience of being able to change display names yourself is pretty handy.  But is nice to come across someone with the same last name as you.  It's kind of a kinship that a "Resident" doesn't understand. :matte-motes-inlove:  I can get a little nostalgic at times.  You know...  the good ol' days...

[Alwin Alcott]

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AbbyFraser wrote:

But one time i made it, and was able to register and activate an account with the last name "Alex", but i deleted that one in 2012 because of some drama, lol...

Maybe they should give new users the option to make up their own last names, if they want one. That would be much better.

When i registered my current account in 2012, i wanted a last name too, so i simply called myself "AbbyFraser" and my display name is "Abby Fraser". So that works just fine.

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you can reactivate that deleted one...

 

and users can make their own displayname.. so they in fact can choose whatever they want

[Abby Heartsong]

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Alwin Alcott wrote:

and users can make their own displayname.. so they in fact can choose whatever they want

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yes, that's the good thing about it.