Thoughts on Unique Professional Username Naming Schemes [closed]

Question

Assume a service whereby everyone who has an english name has a user account. This means there could potentially be billions of user accounts. The primary constraint is that usernames must be professional.

Begin by assigning usernames to these individuals as:

firstname.lastname

This obviously works well until you realise that there are 1000 John Smiths who may wish to use your service.

We could assign usernames to these individuals as:

firstname.lastname.n where n is the order that particular user, of name firsname.lastname, registered their account.

The problem is that no one really would want the non-vanilla version of the username, One would much rather have firstname.lastname than firstname.lastname.n. 'I am not a number, I am a free man!'

So I am asking for suggestions on how this problem could be solved. Some thoughts:

Assign users greek characters instead of numbers. This basically abstracts the fact that their username has a number after it. Assume that the login method would allow a user to input greek characters easily. So the usernames would become:

firstname.lastname.α, firstname.lastname.β, ... firstname.lastname.α.α

Usernames based on registration date, similar to the way subjects in the movie 'The Island' are named. These names would probably be more memorable than with a simple number appended.

firstname.lastname.dd.word, firstname.lastname.6.echo, ... firstname.lastname.2.delta

I'm sure this problem has been considered before - and maybe it is a non-issue. Maybe appending numbers is actually the best way of doing it. Perhaps some other user information should be appended to the username? I would appreciate your thoughts!

Answer 1

At my job we assign the usernames as firstname.lastname. However in those cases that two people share a name the username is assigned as firstname.middleinitial.lastname.

Now this won't work for all 1000 John Smiths but you will end up with fewer name collisions. I have seen some people that have their usernames as firstname.X.lastname or firstname.Z.lastname. One guy claimed his middle name was Zorro and therefore he did have the right middle initial. I think he was pulling my leg since he had a very common name otherwise.

So with that scheme combined with your thoughts you could create a solution that is firstname. (middleinitial or delta where middle initial is the same for both) .lastname. And worst case scenario, add a number to the end.