Chosen last name?

What there ever a time, in SL, when new users could choose their own last name? If so, how long ago was that? Just wondering....

Scaf

Not so long ago, you could choose from a list of last names, and as long as no one had picked your desired first name with that last name, you got that combination.

YOU CAN STILL DO THIS!

But not from LL's account creation page. You need to use one of the third party SL gateways.

Start your search at http://www.slnamewatch.com

Wait a second, LL is picking people's last names for them now? Offering them only ONE choice?

I guess that explains why they added the names like "Rootcreeper"..

No, however customer surnames eventually make it into the name queue and if you are watching you can snag your own. But - I've read LL is going to make it possible to start with one's own name. I have no clue when that will be, though.

Oh..."choose your own last name" has three possible meanings.

1. Choose any last name you want. This has never been possible
2. Use your own Real Life last name. This has never been possible, except when your own name happens to match a name on the current Allowed Last Names list by chance. It MAY be possible in the future, as a previous poster said.
3. Choose a name from a list. This is still possible, but not from the LL signup page.

By the way, Chosen's last name is Few.

If you mean being able to choose any random name you can think of as your SL Surname, the answer is, "Never".

If you're famous in Real Life, and have money to burn, the Lab may condescend to making an avatar for you that matches the name you are famous for. Not possible for the normal people here.

If you want to pay a high initial fee, and buy 20 accounts at a minimum, and pay annual fees to keep the accounts active, a company can pay to create a custom surname for employees, like "CSC" or "IBM" or "SmithCorp", but there are restrictions disallowing creating names this way that match existing or former allowed surnames, or real names.

LL used to maintain a very long list of "Allowed surnames", retiring some after they had been used "often enough", and adding new ones, on a random basis. At one time, any "currently active allowed names" could freely be selected as a surname, and you could then try them out with various given names and it would tell you if you had come up with a combination that was unique, and thus that you could register.

Today, they show you a subset of that list, and only after selecting a first name. Change the first name, and it shows you a different random subset. This makes it almost impossible to deliberately choose to create several accounts with the same surname.

It can still be done, however, even through LL's website. Keep refreshing the page, and the list of allowed surnames changes...

I worded the question poorly. I should have asked "chose you own arbitrary last name." So, the consensus is- never was possible.

Thanks!