When I worked for my university's Student Computing department, usernames were all "up to 7 characters from surname + the first letter of their given name." So there were plenty of stories about bad usernames that the admins would have to fix.
The best one for me, personally, was when I helped a student out whose surname was Takashi and his first name started with a T.
It didn't help that no one at Oregon State considered the 'www' when they chose the school's first domain name. So that turned into [email protected]
Edit to add: This was in the mid-90s. That was that guy's first and (at the time) only email address.
By the end of the first term, www.orst.edu became 'osu.orst.edu' (www still worked, but nothing linked to it). Then over the summer everything was changed to oregonstate.edu.
I worked at a place a decade ago where I worked with schools in my country. An admin at a school called; her name was Barbara. Her last name was, and I’m not making this up, “Adcock”.
Her E-mail was “badcock@school”
I couldn’t help but to think “what if her name was Rachel? Or Deborah? Or Sandra?”
Reminds me of Education Queensland's approach to creating usernames. First letter of the first name, first four letters of the surname. Followed by a sequential number.
I nearly lost it when I saw a staff member by the name of something like Sharon Laverton (names slightly anonymised, but odds are someone else by that name exists) have an email that not only started slave, but also ended with a number for that final dehumanising touch. [email protected].
You'd think that every place should do this, but for whatever reason a lot of them do weird shit like in the OP. Not sure why that is. Maybe they are afraid of the characters running too long or something like that for people with long names?
Edit: Wow just reading through some of the real generated emails in this post is wild lol!!
Megan Bennett Finger
Central Washington University
Ms. Finger,
Per your request, we have converted your email address to our alternate format: [Surname][Middle Initial]Last (to denote the spelled-out name)[First 2 letters of forename]. Your new email address is now [email protected] and your case is now closed.
There was an Alan Buser at my last company…yep, [email protected]. Not only did he have to live with that as his email, but he would occasionally receive reports that definitely should have gone to HR. Eventually they let us alias it to alan@company, but as far as I know when I left he was still getting anything sent to abuser@company too. He was such a nice guy too!
As Nikita Grigorev, I was given an allcaps username made out of first two letters of my name and two letters of surname. I complained, but I was told that the process is a process. They changed for the ANAL guy before, but not for me. So I was called basically a slur for two years
My wife's name sounds like Annette Alonso (not her real name - this one is made up) , and her new employer had standardised emails the first two letters from the first name and the first two letters from last name. You bet she was furious with [email protected], given that she was going to be working with clients. She ultimately got it changed to [email protected]
$ finger me
Login: me Name: mikhail esteban
Directory: /sdf/udd/m/me Shell: /bin/ksh
Never logged in.
New mail received Sat Feb 22 13:32 2025 (UTC)
Unread since Tue Feb 4 07:35 2025 (UTC)
No Plan.
When I worked for my university's Student Computing department, usernames were all "up to 7 characters from surname + the first letter of their given name." So there were plenty of stories about bad usernames that the admins would have to fix.
The best one for me, personally, was when I helped a student out whose surname was Takashi and his first name started with a T.
It didn't help that no one at Oregon State considered the 'www' when they chose the school's first domain name. So that turned into [email protected]
Edit to add: This was in the mid-90s. That was that guy's first and (at the time) only email address.
Oregano State used "www" in their email domain? I totally buy it, but in the "what kinda non tech manager decided on that" kinda way
By the end of the first term, www.orst.edu became 'osu.orst.edu' (www still worked, but nothing linked to it). Then over the summer everything was changed to oregonstate.edu.
Ohio, Oregon, and Oklahoma are gonna have to brawl over who gets the OSU name someday.
how else would you know that they're the wwworst?
I worked at a place a decade ago where I worked with schools in my country. An admin at a school called; her name was Barbara. Her last name was, and I’m not making this up, “Adcock”.
Her E-mail was “badcock@school”
I couldn’t help but to think “what if her name was Rachel? Or Deborah? Or Sandra?”
Or Hannah
Or Mary!
Or Louise
You can’t make this shit up.
That does indeed sound like the wwworst administration.
Wow, the kid named finger
Reminds me of Education Queensland's approach to creating usernames. First letter of the first name, first four letters of the surname. Followed by a sequential number.
I nearly lost it when I saw a staff member by the name of something like Sharon Laverton (names slightly anonymised, but odds are someone else by that name exists) have an email that not only started
slave, but also ended with a number for that final dehumanising touch.[email protected].Corrected to .....
[email protected]
Optional to ...
[email protected]
"I don't understand, that user keeps asking me to fix their email, and they're more angry each time!"
When I handled these, I always checked for poor taste collisions. If found, granted an immediate exception.
She would be Megan.finger@.
Fuck the old systems with hard character limits.
Firstname.lastname@address is pretty much a universal standard, why would you use anything else?
My work does first initial last name, which even internally results in tons of [email protected].
I don't really get why I can't just choose from a list of accepted combinations or something.
This is just supposition but I presume the resmasoning is they want to programatically "calculate" your email address.
I mean that's a dumb constraint but it does explain the requirement.
You'd think that every place should do this, but for whatever reason a lot of them do weird shit like in the OP. Not sure why that is. Maybe they are afraid of the characters running too long or something like that for people with long names?
Edit: Wow just reading through some of the real generated emails in this post is wild lol!!
RIP her inbox.
Megan Bennett Finger
Central Washington University
Ms. Finger,
Per your request, we have converted your email address to our alternate format: [Surname][Middle Initial]Last (to denote the spelled-out name)[First 2 letters of forename]. Your new email address is now [email protected] and your case is now closed.
Thank you,
CWU Support
Finger bang bang into your life!
Seriously though, my experience with requesting a name change from the university IT dept. has been very positive.
I love this
Worked at a company where emails were first initial then last name. So there was a guy named Shawn Lutz so his email was [email protected]
It seemed I was the only one really aware of that since he almost never sent emails
Best one I got is c. ries, [email protected] lol
I had a P. Hart who was stuck with phart@company
We had a slutski here, too 😂
There was an Alan Buser at my last company…yep, [email protected]. Not only did he have to live with that as his email, but he would occasionally receive reports that definitely should have gone to HR. Eventually they let us alias it to alan@company, but as far as I know when I left he was still getting anything sent to abuser@company too. He was such a nice guy too!
As Nikita Grigorev, I was given an allcaps username made out of first two letters of my name and two letters of surname. I complained, but I was told that the process is a process. They changed for the ANAL guy before, but not for me. So I was called basically a slur for two years
My wife's name sounds like Annette Alonso (not her real name - this one is made up) , and her new employer had standardised emails the first two letters from the first name and the first two letters from last name. You bet she was furious with [email protected], given that she was going to be working with clients. She ultimately got it changed to [email protected]
I think "[email protected]" is pretty unique and easy to remember.
I read that as @uwu
:3
OK, if you insist, I will.
Gosh, I would have never figured this out without the giant useless red line!
It even tells people where they can do it!
Thank you for the arrow I would've never guess myself
This scheme makes almost every username sound awful. They new what they were doing.
I know how to fix this, just had the 3rd letter of her first name.