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This one is a potential ‘sticky wicket’ as some have noted. And, for any and many reasons, some folks want to remain anonymous to the rest, and some groups want unabashed outright attachments made.

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I manage a few Groups, among them a Group for Retired, Past, Associated, and Current members of a moderately large fire department. Our membership includes folks who retired from the department in the 80’s – who none of the Current or even past 25 years membership may have only heard of, or not. Likewise, those of us oldtimers (I worked from ’69-2002; retired since then), know those older than us but few who hired on after we retired – and some of them are retiring now! A display name of ‘bumperbender’ might be readily recognized by anyone who was around when the ‘bumper bending’ took place, but not by anyone who joins today; or, conversely, if the bumper got bent today, none of the oldtimers would have a clue who it was. “HoseA” and “JoseB” just don’t identify anything or anyone. And the common theme among all of us is that at one time or another we shared some of our many ‘family of things.’ Unlike so many people and groups – we’ve slept in each other’s beds, eaten from the same plates, and possibly pulled each other’s bacon out of a fire.

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We insist on using/showing the ‘real name’ – and/or, in the case or a ‘widow or widower/significant other’ we’ll show the actual name of the Group member with the name of the former firefighter in parenthesis.

i.e. ‘John Brown’, versus “Jane (John) Brown”. I tell any proposed new member that I send an invite to that they should “fill in YOUR KNOWN NAME in the Display Name field when you get to the sign-in page. If you don’t, I’ll fill it in for you.” I’ve had a few applicants who only submitted with their email moniker…and held the application until I got an answer back from them identifying them and assuring I knew they were ‘one of us’ and appropriate for membership; then approved them and added their appropriate Display Name.