I've been on hiatus for a long while and I logged in to see that all of my petnames have numbers attached to them now. Why is this? And how do I update my pet names so they revert back to their original states?

Firstly, I love your UN!

But as far as your pets... if you are gone for awhile then your account will count as inactive and people can take the names of your pets and use it for theirs. That adds the numbers to yours.

Good news though! They very very recently updated the way names work now. Having a name first makes it a "legacy" name but aside from that any pet can have any name. One by one you can change the names of your pets back- but they won't count as legacy because someone else has snagged that from them unfortunately.

to change a pet's name, go to the pets page and click on the dropdown arrow in the top right corner of the pet's info box, then select "change name."

since you have a regular account, you can change one pet name per week at no cost.

Given your names were taken before the change you can change those specific ones at no count against the current once a week change. Before the change you could've done so without spending csc, but with the change it no longer consumes csc but rather is on a timer. If for some reason your free renames count against your timer make a ticket. You can also now name them how you've always wanted. So if you always wanted popular fairy tale names you can now name them without having to skew or change it. You can only have one of each name on your account at a time though. No having 20 pets named Flower lol I'm also going to presume that given the fact your names have numbers in them you may not want that as the legacy display? If so there is an option at the pools to erase it. I do really wish though if someone makes the very first pet of a name it could get that legacy title as there are many still interesting names never used on site.