Facebook is now letting users have more than one name. This is especially helpful to those people who are actually known by more than one name, which is a fairly common occurrence.
Users can adjust their settings to display one alternate name in addition to their current name:
I can think of at least three of my friends right off hand that go by two different names depending on who they are associating with. A couple of them go by their middle names when they’re with their friends, but they are listed on Facebook under their first names. One of my friends is Korean, but she goes by both her Korean name, and her English name.
A similar situation is described by Sophia Huang on the Facebook Blog. “I grew up in Taiwan and all of my friends in Taiwan recognize me by my Chinese name, while the friends I’ve made after I moved abroad know me by my English name,” she says.
“Both are part of my real identity, but until now I could only show one name in my Facebook account,” adds Huang. “This made it difficult for all of my friends to connect with me. I’ve even received messages from old friends asking who I was before they would approve my friend request because they didn’t recognize my name, even though the profile photo looked familiar to them.”
This is no longer an issue for Facebook users. If you want to list an alternate name, you can go to the account settings page and check the box for displaying the alternate name.
