What about Lakoocaracha or Lackookooclock ?

After this I think that Lackoo is going to want an entirely different name. :D

How about Ookcal? He can pretend to be a californian orangutan (or governor)

Rohan16.

Wouldn't that mean you and (ex)Lackoo would get confused with each other?

I don't get it.

I once coded up a system that made it dead easy to change names without a user ever losing their unique identity. Surprisingly, it wasn't very difficult to do at all.

I agree it's probably not really needed -- and depending on how the GOG site was coded, may be near bloody impossible to implement -- but it can be done if you borrow the concept of the ID codes used on some image boards and apply that to a master account name that cannot be changed, while also providing a display name that can be changed.

I have been annoyed by this in the past as I apparently misspelled my user name on registration, though by now I'm known as miaghstir and changing to the correctly spelled maighstir would just be weird.

All of which I was able to solve using the method I detailed above. With the method I used, everyone could literally use the same name while all are still individually identifiable.

The only problems which then remain are down to user laziness.

Would you want to take your rep with you? It would seem odd that a person that has apparently never posted has rep. We might think there's someone else like GameRager, leading us to severe depression, and possibly forcing us toward the inevitable conclusion that all humanity must be destroyed. Replies would also be confusing during the transition period.

Having said that I was expecting a forum name option to be available on the account page. Hence my highly anonymous name of initial, surname.

Support answered today . -1 rep for this

Sorry to hear!

Aaah, why does nobody informs me about this necromancy going on here???

It's theoretically possible of course. It's just that a lot of user databases are built around the idea of the username string as the primary key that identifies the user. Which means there's no safe way to modify it without doing so in many places and scrubbing all the code that uses the username to consider what happens when it changes (in practice this means enjoying lots and lots of bugs).

A site or user database can certainly be designed where this isn't the case. For example the username might just be a way of referrring to a userID internally, but usernames are conveniently human-readable so they make for good inspectability and clarity. So typically you can't change them.

Be glad it's not some stupid design like your email address as your primary identifier. That would *never* change.... uh.. yeah.