Ruthin Deed
This is being closed because I realised after a further name change that my.secondlife.com was not creating a new display name of the previous account name, but honouring a previous change of the display name. The problem is the lack of a reset button in the Display Name settings in my.secondlife.com. So I will redo this as a feature request. For anyone checking the progress of this bug report I have left the text of the erroneous report. The edits in curly brackets give my current understanding of the problem.
  1. Pay to change account name.
  2. Name changes and you are told to file a support ticket if the previous name continues to exist anywhere after 24 hours.
  3. The profile on my.secondlife.com automatically triggers the creation of a Display Name in the previous name and adds to the Feed an entry: "[Current name] changed their display name to [previous name.]"
{EDIT: step 3 is incorrect. A name change of a different account revealed that it is not an action triggered by the my.secondlife.com website, but a record of a previous change of display name to match the account name. In-world this is done by a not very clear Reset button (it should say something like "Revert to User Name", but my.secondlife.com only allows entering the User Name as a new Display Name.}
  1. In-world no such display name exists. It is only on my.secondlife.com.
{EDIT: this is because of an attempt to revert a display name change on my.secondlife.com}
  1. Days later the previous name continues to appear as a display name on my.secondlife.com.
  2. Going in-world and using the viewer action Edit Display Name to change the display name to the account to the account name fixes the web profile problem.
{EDIT: I was actually setting a new Display Name as I did not understand the use of the Reset button in-world}
  1. Many users are probably following the official advice and filing a support ticket because the erroneously created web profile only display name continues to show their previous name.
  2. Many other users probably never use my.secondlife.com and are unaware that the entire internet can see the link between their previous and current account names.