every once in a while, I look at my friends list and a name pops out at me that I don't recognize at all, and I can't help but wonder if this is a new name of an old friend.
it would be super helpful if there was a home page notification generated for friends, i.e., "Chip Dipson is now known as Dip Dopson!"
or maybe the ability to notify your friends could be an option in the name change form.
I know that there was a long and interesting discussion that was partially related to the privacy implications of this idea a while back, when the question of possible solutions to the duplicate names problem came up, and would be curious to know what the thinking along these lines is in general these days.