I have a bunch of legacy names but would just clear them if not for the fact I can hide them with coding. Maybe I still will to be punk because the fact I used to want people to quit so I could have their pet name was pathetic :/

I guess it's cool they're there for people who care but I couldn't care less. When I was younger I stalked names and refreshed like mad at clearings, but now that I'm older I don't particularly want a shrine to how much of a loser I was on my pet's profile. I think making names non-unique was a wonderful move. I'm happy to have all the names I want at last without the pressure of keeping a pet I'm no longer inspired by lest I regret losing the name!

I don't mind legacy names. I might want to adopt a pet with a weird legacy name just for giggles.

Legacy names can also be used to compliment a pet story if you choose.

I did that with my pet

I like them in a sense that they add value to the original pet. It makes me very proud of some of my legacy names, because they're the "definitive" version of that name; you look that name up with the /pets/[Name] URL format and you find them. For my pets like

But what said is totally correct-- it can be a total nightmare for fanpets. I'm really happy to have the freedom where I can't get the original name! This hasn't really been too much of a problem for me until recently, but it DOES mean that I can grab more common/popular names without having to go for some obscure alternative.

I wasn't one who cared too much about pets, but I do have some names that I snagged (Mallory, Redwall, Academy, Rampion). I'm happy to have them, and happy others can have them too.....but we can look at mine and see mine were the 'originals'.

Yeah i also think the names add some (personal) value to the pets I owned for ages prior the change. Getting these names was not allways easy and a lot of mine I got from friends (which adds a more personal value for me) or adopted via apps, some in clearings. This might not be much for some people but it is often was time, money and patience you needed to get names.

I also did only change 3 or 4 names of my pets I had when the change happend but I also only adopted names when They did fit my chars and now with the new freedom of names I can also make my chars I never could get the names of.

I worked hard for some of my pets names, and others I adopted because I liked the challenge of taking a name and making a character to fit it. For that reason I haven’t changed many of my pets names. I won’t delete their legacy names, even if they no longer fit them, because I do think it’s a neat part of the pet's history. I used CSC to change some of my pets names back when that was a thing, and a part of me wishes their legacy name was that original name they had, even if they were not traditionally desirable names. But going forward my pets will not have legacy names, and that’s okay.

I, uh. Legacy names turn me off, to be honest. Sorry, friends.

I like legacy names when they are tongue-in-cheek. Like, when a legacy name plays into the alternative name of the pet, like a pseudonym or nickname. Done right, omg, it's brilliant. I adore it.

But, legacy names as a remembrance item... I'm sorry, guys, but I don't feel the same way about being an OG of 50+ unique names. I was on the verge of quitting Subeta before the change rolled out, and without it, I would have ultimately left. I hated how the unique name system drove hoarding, lying to friends among friends in private Discord channels, and diminished creativity overall for new & old users, and it majorly hurt the users who returned to broken accounts.

I leave unique names for those who can find merit in them. I personally clear them the minute I take a pet permanently for my account.

I think it was poorly implemented. For a variety of reasons. Not to mention, it wouldn't have taken any effort if we at least had a small warning in case people wanted to change any names of their pets around, so they could have x legacy name on x idea or whatever else they wanted to do. Some notice would have been nice.

But ultimately it is what it is. All of my current pets atm have legacy names, I like having the unique URL if nothing else, though I haven't really taken advantage of the system yet since I genuinely liked my pet names to begin with and I've been busy with school/work so making new pets atm is kind of pointless since I can just put it off indefinitely if I want to. I might eventually adopt some out since it feels crowded but I'm not in a hurry.

I do miss being on the "hunt" for pet names though; it was fun for me to look around for a name and find when I really cool one was open. I realize that's not something everyone would want to do on subeta, of course, but it was an activity I could do without having to worry about working on a pet profile and subeta randomly chewing up my work and spitting it out into a garbled mess like some of my pets' profiles :') At least I still have my pets' treasure chests...

I used to be harassed because people where jealous of my pets' names, so on the bright side, that won't really happen to other people. I don't imagine the legacy name URL will be that desired. Though if people were really cutthroat between friends over pet names, they weren't really much of friends in the first place... whenever a friend of mine was after a pet name I wanted, I'd wish them luck and let them know I was after it too, and if my plans fell through I'd give them first dibs.

Hopefully in the long term it'll help positively contribute to the health and survival of the site. Though I think the wardrobe has a much larger draw than pets have had in many, many years.

I like the change a lot, especially combined with the free name changes. I no longer feel like I have to keep uninspiring petnames just because "what if I want the name back" XD and it makes me feel freer to play around with pet ideas, instead of having the weird permanence of a name&having to relate the character to that.

I do have a pet I adopted purely because it had a cool legacy name. It's just another part of the pet for me. Some pets have good stats, some pets have a low ID, some pets have a cool LN.. shrugs!

To answer one of the concerns of your original post: now that the search function is semi-back, you can find out just how "unoriginal" you are in naming a pet. :) For example, there are now 18 "Autumn"s, 3 of whom are harvest jollins. But there is still only one "Alt".

Personally, I don't really care for legacy names, mostly because legacy names can't be changed and newer pets can't have legacy names, so even if I hadn't deleted most of my legacy names I would have ended up with many without legacy names. I prefer my pets to be equal in most respects.

I do have a few legacy names that I would never delete or give up. In fact, I have exactly three: one is my RL cat's name, one is my RL name, and one is a pet name that I've had on this site for a very long time, so I'm sentimentally attached. The rest don't really mean much to me, although the ones I haven't deleted I've tried to incorporate into my pets' stories in a different way so it doesn't feel like they're "more specialer" than my other pets.

For example, my pets

Hey what are legacy names and how does a pet get one??

Legacy names are special notices on a pet's profile that indicate that pet was the pet to have a certain name before non-unique names were implemented on July 26, 2020.

Legacy names cannot be acquired or changed - they can only be deleted if you don't want them. Any pet created after July 26, 2020 will not have a legacy name.

A quick look at your pets tells me that most or all of your pets have legacy names - take a look at their profiles and you will see the smaller, grayer notice under their names that says "Legacy Name".

For more info, see this topic: FAQ about Legacy Names/Non-Unique Pet Names

I was on hiatus when this change was implemented so when I came back and found it I was pretty shocked, considering that this was a big change to me and I had been on the fence about it at first. None of my pet's names are particularly spectacular but I was pretty proud of myself to own 'Laboratory' & 'Achroma'. I'm someone who came up with a character name second and the concept of said character first, so I didn't have issues scouring the adoption board for a name that inspired me. More popularly, I would find an adjective that fit their aesthetic/character/story and make that their on site name, allowing me to come up with a real name for them later.

Originally I wasn't sure if I'd like this change back when it was just up in the air. I didn't stalk any of my pet names or anything like that, but I just liked knowing I was the only owner. On the flip side, I really liked that I didn't a) have to hoard names I'd do nothing with and b) could name my characters whatever I wanted. I recently created 'Decay' and 'Marshmallow', and I'm excited! I've only renamed one of my pets, Vicktor, to his actual name: Viktor. I'm not sure if I'll keep his legacy name or not because it doesn't really have anything to do with his character and I don't really need to keep it as a badge that I was the original owner.

Plus, I recently finally let go of some pets I had for years. I always told myself I was keeping them for nostalgia reasons, but I think it was more that I liked their names and feared I'd regret giving them away. It's liberating to finally let them go because their arcs were stale for years and never went anywhere. Finally, I have room to make more relevant characters and I can name them whatever! It's great! I'll probably still name most of them descriptive words or whatever but the sky is the limit. And if I decide to give a few of my pets their actual character names, their legacy names will be relevant in most cases, which is cool.

tldr because i went on a rant LMAO: legacy names are awesome but having the ability to clear them is also cool. The creativity boon we've gotten from this is incredible.

I see! super awesome :0!! Thank you super duper much for the help. Frankly I was pretty confused.

HECK (kicks foot in the air) YEAH I am so glad I can erase legacy names because, truth be told, I don't give a diddly-darn about them.

I've been a user for almost 13 years and my creativity with pets has always been inherently linked to having the "correct" name for the character. Once the non-unique name change went through, I went through all my pets and gave them names that I liked FAR more than what they had been originally. I probably changed, oh, about 40 pet names? I still haven't cleared all of their legacy names yet, because that's going to take forever, lol.

Speaking as a Pet Spotlight buff, I prefer to have pets with legacy names, especially considering that many of the legacy names I had were really nice ones. That being said, I wouldn't say it's an absolute necessity for me to have all legacy names. There are a few names I'm planning to get that I know for sure won't be legacy and that's totally okay with me. I consider some of the legacy names I have as a bragging right, and I'll totally keep them displayed on my pets' profiles; I don't plan on clearing any of them either. It's just not something I'm going to be completely anal about when it comes to Pet Spotlight. If it has a legacy name, great!! But if not, no worries. A small part of me is a little bit sad that I won't have totally unique pet names anymore but that's okay because now everyone has the opportunity to name their pets whatever they want and I can't see that as a bad thing.

I recently came back after a loooong time of "playing" (more like logging on so my account wouldn't be cleared...) intermittently. I've been a member of Subeta for almost 16 years, had a LOT of legacy names that were sought after (Abyss, Lullaby, Veil, the list goes on) and I adore this change.

I love my pets. My pets for a long time were the main reason I played. As much as I love my pets, I don't do much with them because I'm all over the place and keep their stories mostly in my head. But because of the unique names, I still didn't want to adopt them out to people who would do more than I was because "what if I change my mind later or have a burst of inspiration!". Because of this I LOVE the change. It's made me feel less guilty about being a yucky pet name hoarder (I'm sorry to everyone who has commented/sMailed me over the years asking for my names), gotten me more active on the site and actually wanting to do stuff with my pets, AND have given me pet names I never would have had access to.

I can see why people didn't like this change, and I can't imagine the fallout that must have happened when it was first announced. BUT, I think it was a good and necessary change. :)

The change pisses me off honestly. I liked having unique real word names and now that’s gone. I took pride in my odd word named pets . Even if the name is unused now it doesn’t count as the original and that in infuriating.

Ugh it’s like the Neo converted pets all over again

I think the change is alright. I'm a little conflicted as to what to do with some of my pets now, as I have a few compromise names in attempt to fit a story idea. I don't know if I should hold onto them for their legacy or switch to a better name. I'm just indecisive now.

I'm planning to do something like this for my seasonal pets, one of which obviously shares the name to your Autumn (or will in the coming weeks when I change the name). I went with anagrams because the seasons were obviously spoken for and they were meant to represent my own growth thru the seasons. Now I can use the Legacy anagram name as a representation of my past feelings and their true names as who I've become.

I personally love being able to have any-name pet and plan to adopt out all of the pets whose names I planned to change to those who want their Legacy names (namely my WoW fandom pets as I no longer play).