How To Get The Last Name You Want

From My Blog.

On 2008-03-14, LL made an unannounced change to their Join Now page. No longer are all available last names listed in a drop-down. Instead, only 60 of the 1000-2000 currently available last names are given as choices. Why Linden Lab has made this change is unclear, and I won’t dare speculate. In any case, this new policy can make it difficult to join the game with a certain last name. You might want to do this if, for instance, you and a friend or partner want to create new characters that share a last name. Or you might see a newly-born character with a cool last name in the game, and want to make a character with that name too. So, how can one create an character with a certain last name, given this new, frustrating barrier? Read the rest…
http://adz.secondlifekid.com/2008/03/16/how-to-get-the-last-name-you-want/

Thanks Adz, this looks pretty important.

Would be nice if somehow we could get that info to people who cant read the forums.

Maybe volunteer the topic to some SL related publications.

Great job, Adz. It's disappointing that the entire process is still much more difficult than before but thank you for providing an option that works.

There was only ever around 60 names to chose from as far as I've ever noticed in 18 months, they do rotate occassionally still I guess.

Yes that has been my observation too, I must have missed a link somewhere if there were more names to choose from.

Thanks Adz, is there a way we should report last names that are not yet on your list? I found one that came up in my random list that isn't on your list yet.

Not to turn this into another "coolest avie name" thread, but sometimes it pays to use Adz' site to find the last name you want.

Yesterday, I met a "Psycho Ward".

Are you sure that wasn't where you woke up? (sorry j/k)

Thank you Adz....I was able to finally get the name I wanted. I spent about 4 hours on Friday reloading the Join Now page trying to get 'Champion' to come up and it never did...took me all of 5 minutes to finally get it this morning using your site.

Hello Adz! I have noticed that my name is also not on the Name Watch website. I get an error when I look for Yu's in the People search tab, and so I have not found out, yet, if there other Yu's out there. And now I see that my family isn't on the Name Watch website either.

You don't actually exist. *nods solemnly*

Oh. Thank-you for confirming that I do not exist. I have been feeling somewhat transparent recently.

The list may only contain a selection of the available names, but it doesn't seem to actually check whether the name you're registering for was on the list.

I used Fiddler to alter the "last_name_id" value on the form (to the ID of a name that wasn't in the list of options) before letting the request go through and it registered with the name I wanted that wasn't on the list. That tool is probably a bit too complex for most people though, although I could write up a step-by-step if someone really wants.

Alternatively, someone should be able to write up a browser-side scripty that changes the "last_name_id" on the form to the number that corresponds with the name you want. That would be easy for anyone to use .

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Adz- could you use https://secondlife.com/join/namecheck.php?fn=Lala&ln=&start=x to iterate over the list of available names 5 at a time? I didn't check to see if it repeats itself after a certain number though (change the x in start=x with a multiple of 5 - 0 works too for the first 5 names. It doesn't matter what you put for first name/fn btw, Lala is something random, but the page won't show with out it).

Just another way in which Search is borked: Making search terms be a minimum of three characters so that surnames of two characters return an error.

Oh and get the date in the right order, it's bad enough in the last few years since 11/9 happened all this crazy month before the date thing being pushed on the rest of the world, now it's year, month, day?
Next we will be telling the time as 45:3pm ?

Not borked.........its just ( MIGHT )over loading with data.....some that is not even loaded from offsignup sites...The data is not reach llabs Via the offsite signup locations. I believe it collects a xnumber of data bits then relays then not real time. But a delay any where from 20 mins to who knows when......

Just following the international standard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
The parts of the date decrease in magnitude as you move left to right... thats what we do with time (hours, then minutes, then seconds) shouldn't we do that with dates, too? (years, months, days).

Two-letter last names are a royal pain in the ass for me to count. I have to queue them manually and I save them for last. They take about 1000x more requests to the sl search server than they ought to, and I feel guilty every time i set up my bot to count them.
But, there should be no trouble seeing them in the last of names even though the usage count should be blank.
Yes... here...
http://slnamewatch.com/index.php?action=view_record&last_name=Yu
If it is listed as heritage, that just means it wasn't available on ANY of the join now pages last time i checked. If it doesn't appear on any join now page, all my script can do is assume it has been retired. Its not an error in logic; its just that there is so much missing information now that the join now pages each only show 60 out of 1500 last names. The system worked perfectly before this change on LL's side. Anyway, check my site again later and it will show up as active.

There are so many new names, it will take a full week to get their first round of counts. Only after some time will the popularity of the names really emerge.

Thanks, Colette. I have alerted a couple major SL new agencies, but no bites. I can take a hint.

I was searching for some of the alternate registration portals and found one that looks like it actually lists all of the currently available last names -- all of them in one drop down at once:

http://www.pnewell.com/regAPI/RegAPI.aspx