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After 3pointD quotes Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes as saying he would soon enter the virtual world of Second Life under his own name, reader Ordinal Malaprop commented that “There’s already a resident called Nick Rhodes, though. (There’s already a whole sim called Nick Rhodes too.) I wonder how that’s going to play out?” We hear that Linden Lab is now contemplating new naming schemes for residents (not as a result of Nick’s presence, to be sure), but the issue raises a host of interesting questions.

One that springs immediately to mind is that of name camping. Now that SL users have the ability to create a practically unlimited number of alternate characters for free, it would be possible to snap up the names of famous people in the hopes that they might later purchase them from you, just as people do with Internet domain names. The Nick Rhodes avatar has been around for more than three years, though, and doesn’t seem to be engaged in such a practice. The Nick Rhodes region is part of a new continent whose regions are named either for real-world artists or for long-time SL residents.

Just Bovington of Rivers Run Red responds in the same comments thread to the effect that Rivers is working with Linden Lab on a new naming convention that would let them skirt the problem. Details on this have yet to emerge, but it could be interesting. Making residents choose from an arbitrary list of last names often makes for some interesting possibilities, but it radically limits how you can identify yourself in the virtual world. It seems to me that LL will have to move to a new model sooner or later.

One scheme that’s been contemplated, we hear, is to let residents purchase a last name of their own devising, and then let the owner of the name decide who may or may not use it. This scheme has apparently been dropped — hopefully because LL realized it was the wrong way to go. Letting one resident lock others out of the use of a name would limit the possibilities even more than they’re limited today.

3pointD, of course, has written about issues of online identity before. At the moment, each secure system accessed via the Internet needs to do its own securing. But this situation gives rise to a desperately unwieldy proliferation of online logins, passwords and identities. This will eventually change, but it won’t happen tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we are now seeing a proliferation of identities within Second Life itself. A user’s every alt needs its own name (of course) and its own password. It may even have its own credit card information associated with it. Some may prefer this. But for those of us who aren’t worried about anonymity or protecting ourselves from being banned, could there not be a better way?

Looking ahead, I’d say there is. I usually travel in Second Life under the guise of Walker Spaight — that is, with the “Walker Spaight” nameplate floating above my head. but what if I were to wander over to a neighboring region, round a corner and suddenly come face to face with someone with the same proper noun floating above him? Walker Spaight, meet Walker Spaight. In the real world, it happens all the time. Why could it not happen in Second Life?

Technically, there’s no reason it couldn’t happen — though not today. SL avatars are generally identified by name that’s unique in the avatar namespace, but each also has a unique key that identifies it to the system. I believe (though I’m not entirely sure) that those keys do not change over the life of the avatar. Though many scripts and functions in SL examine an avatar’s name to make various determinations, there’s no reason why name and kay couldn’t be divorced at some point in the future. You’d still be able to tell the two Walker Spaight’s apart, but you’d have to examine their keys.

Personally, I hope LL finds a way to do this, at some point. I recently fired up an alt named Mark Wallace. I can now enter the virtual world as myself, if I wish. But what of the other real-world Mark Wallaces out there? Why shouldn’t they also have the chance to make their virtual presence resemble their real one as closely as possible — right down to their avatar’s name?

Such a scheme — unlimited naming possibilities underpinned by unique identifiers — might be confusing, at first, but it’s no more confusing than real life. Residents of virtual worlds might have to be more careful than usual: because appearance is so malleable, Mark Wallace #2 could easily be made to look like Mark Wallace #1, and so be used confuse one of Mark Wallace #1’s friends, perhaps for nefarious purposes. But software can easily be made to help with this situation, and the benefits would outweigh the dangers, in my opinion.

I have no idea whether Linden Lab is even contemplating such a shift, but it’s clear that they will have to move off their current model eventually. If Second Life really is to become something akin to the World Wide Web, forcing users to choose from a small set of last names is constricting at best and patronizing at worst. I look forward to seeing what they come up with.