# Username vs Name

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/username-vs-name/97947
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [September 24, 2018, 5:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/username-vs-name/97947 "2018-09-24T17:16:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![robmc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/robmc/32/125900_2.png) [@robmc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robmc)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2018, 6:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/username-vs-name/97947/2 "2018-09-24T18:49:37Z")

</div>

Users do not specifically determine what is shown, this will be determined by your site settings in different places.

### User cards & profiles

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/a/9/a9a23177c3ec156e267fca2ff3e3a20e0cf4b55f.png)

The three elements to juggle are:

1. Full name  
This is the ‘real name’ and you can make it required or not. If you are worried about privacy, then you might not ask for it. Alternatively, you could collect it but hide it by unchecking the `enable names` option

2. Username  
This is required for Discourse to operate

3. Priority  
You can de-emphasise names by prioritising usernames, or you can turn this off to focus on the real name

Another useful option is to disable user cards and profiles for anonymous users. In combination with the security below, only logged-in users will see more personal data

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/c/7/c76cd700740baa52b9d23a52db6ec0ace0f79b1b.png)

### Posts

If the data exists and is available, you can enable this setting for posts (or not enable it for privacy)

![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/optimized/3X/e/6/e602df833e356a1d5dfe9c0d3a4e7a908da7701e_2_690x46.png)

One thing to bear in mind, is that when the username and the real name are the ‘same’ (ignoring spaces), the second element will be hidden to avoid duplication, so for example:

My username `robmc` is different from my full name

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/d/6/d614a5426e87a99d55a953fee59437bcdbb9badd.jpeg)

… while my colleague’s matches

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/3/a/3a72d7e86990bab36b7a0e9f5288b0d66565b090.png)

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/username-vs-name/97947)._