Remember, quite a lot of people would like to put their own name or a common or popular name as their nickname - a good example being 'Alex':

 [ ![The amount of 'Alex's on the Askubuntu user page][1] ](https://askubuntu.com/users?tab=Reputation&filter=all&search=alex)

A previous example of repeated names used to be `blade19899` - see [here](http://meta.askubuntu.com/q/8439/178596) - a lot of which seemed to be copying [this user](https://askubuntu.com/users/36315/blade19899), even the avatar/logo as well:

![blade19899 dupes](https://i.sstatic.net/unLhf.png)

Also, being able to put the same name means you don't get what you get with many other sites - `Alex01`, `Alex-2`, etc - which can if anything be *more* confusing...


  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/AcJbC.png