I often find that a lot of people who are new to Minecraft end up asking the same technical questions. One that I hear often is “How do I change my Minecraft name?”. Thankfully, this question is easily answered now! Read on to find out about changing your name, and the limitations associated with it.
Your Minecraft name is your identity on servers. Everyone will know you by that name. People can easily find you by searching it up, and you might even be the envy of your server if your name is unique and fun. There are a variety of reasons for why you may want to change your Minecraft name. It may be because you’re tired of it, or because it’s causing you grief by being embarrassing or silly. Regardless of the reason, the process of changing it is pretty straightforward.
Picking a Name
First, see if the Minecraft name you want is available. The perfect tool for this is NameMC. This site checks a specified name to see if it can be used or when it will be available, if it’s currently taken. You simply search for the Minecraft name in the search bar. The current owner of the name (if there is one) and the name’s history will be displayed. See below for an example of what this looks like.
You can also search for names to grab before anyone else by going to the top of the page and clicking on the drop down menu that says “Upcoming Names”. This can help you snag an awesome name that you may have not even thought of!
Changing Your Name
After you’ve chosen which Minecraft name you want, venture over to Mojang’s official page and click on “Account”. Click the “Log In” button in the top-right corner. If you haven’t migrated your account – which lets you log in to the Mojang site with your email (rather than your username) – now is the time to transfer this over. It’s a required step if you want to change your name.
When logging in, the site should take you to this page. There your Minecraft name and a link to change it is displayed.
When you click the change button, you are taken to a page where can type your desired name in. The box appears either red or green. If it appears green, the name is available. Type in your password and you are good to go. The box appears red if the name you want is not available, and you will have to choose another name to proceed. You can sometimes use underscores or alternative characters (such as a zero instead of an ‘o’) if you really want a particular name, but it is already taken.
Restrictions on Changing Your Minecraft Name
Mojang has a few restrictions in place, which you should keep in mind when choosing your name.
Firstly, there are a few limits on the characters used in your name. You must have between 3 and 16 characters in length. In addition, underscores (_) are the only special characters that you can use.
Secondly, Mojang automatically blocks curse words. If you manage to get around this and your name has an offensive word, then it may be blocked or banned on some servers that you join. Empire Minecraft, for example, has a strict policy on inappropriate names to mirror the server chat rules.
The last restriction to remember is the most important. You can only change your name every 30 days. If you decide your new name is not for you, then you may decide to change your name back to the original one. However, you will have to wait 30 days first, and then you have 7 days until everyone else has access to it. For example, if I changed my name from Qkazooo to something else, my old name would still be held for 7 days after the 30 day period so that I could change back to the name Qkazooo. After those 7 days are up, someone else can grab the name and I may not be able to get it back. Luckily enough for me, this hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully it won’t happen to you either.
Good luck choosing your new identity. I hope this guide assisted you! If you are still having trouble with a name change, you may also find the Mojang’s help page on the topic useful.
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