Last Names for Second Life Avatars, Originally Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut, Returning After 7 Year Absence

Linden Lab taketh away -- but Linden Lab also giveth back:

Second Life turns 15 this year! To kick off our year-long birthday celebration, we’ve rounded up 15 exciting improvements and features that make Second Life better than ever in 2018 and beyond... 

7. The return of Last Names - You’ve asked for it (a lot!), so we will provide a way to customize your last name in Second Life! More details will be available later this year.

As it happens, last names for SL avatars were removed 7 years ago, replaced by a confusing and highly impersonal avatar account naming system. (At least veteran users from before that time were able to keep their own last names -- see above.) The end of last names was so unpopular, users began passing around a workaround feature for getting a last name. (This post explaining how to do that was among the most popular on New World Notes in 2011.)

I'm curious how Linden Lab re-introduces last names. The original idea was to give new users a pre-created list of surnames to choose from, then replace those surnames after a certain time. (In my Linden Lab days, I sat next to former community manager Daniel Huebner, and enjoyed watching him wracking his brain to come up with new last names, for a time going through various desserts of the world -- which is why many oldie SLers are named, say, "Tiramisu".) With shared last names, groups of users would have an extended "family" of other users with similar life experiences, so to speak, since they joined the virtual world at roughly the same period of real life time.

And if that idea sounds familiar, yes, it was partly inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick :

Even when Vonnegut dared to propose a utopian scheme, it was a happily dysfunctional one. In Slapstick, Wilbur Swain wins the presidency with a scheme to eliminate loneliness by issuing people complicated middle names (he becomes Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain) which make them part of new extended families. He advises people to tell new relatives they hate, or members of other families asking for help: "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?" Of course, this fails to prevent plagues, the breakdown of his government, and civil wars later in the story.

It's true giving people shared names won't necessarily stop civil wars, but I can say there was just a little more social cohesion and community support in Second Life before last names went away.

Hat tip: The eagle eye of last name-having Alicia Chenaux.

Oh. My. GOD. The return of last names this year?! YES PLEASE!!! #SecondLife https://t.co/PH1S9jFwu7

— aliciachenaux (@aliciachenaux) March 21, 2018

Comments

[montecore babcock]

Yes, yes, yes!!!

[Ilsa Hesse]

Yay!
To this day, when I see someone without a last name part of me subconciously thinks "newbie", even though many of them are years old.
Linden Labs, whether they realized it or not, created a class system. I hope that they let people who DONT have a last name choose one to make up for their time without.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

They really need to go back and examine why they removed last names in the first place.

I was told by I believe it was Amanda Linden years back that the reason was because they were losing a massive amount of signups at the point where people had to choose a last name.

At the very least they should monitor it very closely to make sure they're not repeating the same mistakes.

Then again, this is Linden Lab.

[Pappy Enoch]

We Enochs aims to grow faster'n weeds in June. Hoo whee. Them-there Linden Gorillas done sum'fin right for once.

[Grid Famous Games]

I can't believe it's been 7 years. That's exciting.

[Valkyrie Ice]

And I still think I'm one of the very very few people in SL who actually has my real name in SL. They actually had it listed in the original name selection.

[Scary Mary]

$35 to change/fix a name if the account is a paid premium one?
people do discriminate regarding your name even if you have a cool one.
7 year old account with last name 'Resident' treated like garbage even by lindens inworld themselves plus by damn near everyone with a 'real' last name, my 14 year old account is treated as if I was somehow wise, being some kind of demigoddess, while 1000% bullet proof from being labeled anything my 'resident' account would and often has been.

It would be nice to convert some of my old canceled accounts into the true names I wish they had been, but like many, my real life has more priority now, just one account being all i need to log in with.

For many I think too much time has passed for people to care like they once did about the names, perhaps 7 years too late? only time will tell.

[James Cook]

Ha! One of the last features I worked on before leaving Linden Lab was the removal of last names. Dartagan Sheperd is right -- whenever you have a registration flow for any service you lose signups for each additional step. Picking a last name from a list is unusual for an online service. Potential new users were pretty confused: "why can't I just use the username I use everywhere else?" and/or "why can't I just use my real name?".

Of course, I worked at Linden when we added last names (dunno who actually wrote that code). So we've come full full full circle. :-)

Cheers,
the former James Linden

[Dartagan Shepherd]

You guys are missed. The old posse ... now they knew how to do an SL reboot ;)

[Conny]

How come Kurt Vonnegut can get away with saying, "Fuck" on this website but my comments get deleted every time I use the same word to describe LL and Ebbe?

-Confused

[Hamlet Au]

Kurt motherfucking Vonnegut can fucking say whatever the fuck he fucking wants to say in NWN for fuck's sake.

[TDGunner]

YAY!!!
To the former James Linden - it was a stupid move and LL was tone deaf to the people that actually used SL.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Praise $DEITY. The only avatars that should have the last name "Resident" are any members of The Residents who might choose to participate in Second Life.

[Sara Llewellyn]

Our Lindens, who art in the Labs,
Hallowed be thy prims.
Thy Grid-dom come, thy will be done,
On sims, as it is in The Preview.
Give us this day our daily crash,
And forgive us our Spammery,
As we forgive those, who grief against us.
And lead us not, into private parcels.
Amen.

[irihapeti]

@Hamlet

You missed before "NWN" q: (:

[irihapeti]

on the topic.

Hope is not going to be a pick list again. Better to be able pick your own last name I think.

With people who have names like JaneDoe Resident then they should get dibs on changing their name to Jane Doe.

JaneDoe Doe is not going to be happy if not and somebody else was able to burgle Jane Doe first before them.

And if this case was an outcome of the system then JaneDoe Resident will have to make a visible return in the viewer, which is going to upset a whole lot of people whether they have changed their names or not.

JaneDoe [Resident] and Jane.Doe

[12345]

I just hope they let us get a name change for free. :(

[Trilby Minotaur]

I'm sure I stopped a number of times at the last name screen, but it wasn't because I confused. It was because I found a few that I liked and I wanted to think about it. Other times I saw a last name that I wanted a different first name for.