# Non-ASCII user names

**URL:** https://community.metabrainz.org/t/non-ascii-user-names/609069
**Category:** Site discussion
**Tags:** unicode, discourse, sso, username, musicbrainz
**Created:** [November 11, 2022, 11:13am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/non-ascii-user-names/609069 "2022-11-11T11:13:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![jesus2099](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/jesus2099/32/36_2.png) [@jesus2099](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/jesus2099)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 11:13am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/non-ascii-user-names/609069/1 "2022-11-11T11:13:06Z")

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> [@السلام عليكم ورحمة الله](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/topic/608519/1):
>
> Ù\_Ø\_Ù\_Ø\_Ø\_Ù\_Ø\_غØ\_Ù\_Ù\_ص

 ![IMG_20221111_121425](https://community.metabrainz.org/uploads/default/original/3X/6/0/60a96a8db1b2ae937e67dfb69c227716268ee4fa.jpeg)  
I guess @clA\_ment is Clément.

Apparently non-ASCII characters are (unfortunately) not handle correctly by Disclose and/or MusicBrainz.

Maybe the MusicBrainz user creation should forbid non-ASCII characters where we are choosing our user name?

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### Author: ![Freso](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/freso/32/25_2.png) [@Freso](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Freso)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2022, 12:54pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/non-ascii-user-names/609069/2 "2022-11-11T12:54:07Z")

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> [@jesus2099](#):
>
> Maybe the MusicBrainz user creation should forbid non-ASCII characters where we are choosing our user name?

Quite relatedly:

> <https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-9557>

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### Author: ![jesus2099](https://community.metabrainz.org/user_avatar/community.metabrainz.org/jesus2099/32/36_2.png) [@jesus2099](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/jesus2099)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2025, 8:17am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/non-ascii-user-names/609069/3 "2025-11-14T08:17:00Z")

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I see 3 options to improve this.  
Because it quite sucks that you don’t know when you create your MB username that you will get a lame Discourse username out of it, like this one, for example: `Ù_Ø_Ù_Ø_Ø_Ù_Ø_غØ_Ù_Ù_ص`

**A.** Make MB username normalisation for Discourse SSO more intelligent

- Turn `é` into `e` instead of `Ã_`
- Related to [Normalise usernames for Discourse SSO](https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-9558)?

**B.** Restrict MB usernames to plain `/[A-Za-z0-9_-]*[A-Za-z0-9]/`

- must only include numbers, letters, dashes, dots, and underscores
- must end with a letter or a number
- Related to [Disallow “special” characters for new accounts](https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-9557)

**C.** Allow [Unicode usernames](https://meta.discourse.org/t/unicode-usernames-and-group-names/117737?u=jesus2099) in Discourse

- now possible since 2019-05-14
- `unicode_usernames` = true?
- same `allowed_unicode_username_characters` as in MusicBrainz
- No tickets yet

I would prefer option **C** , then **A**.  
Because I would prefer that we don’t need to change existing MB usernames.

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Related topics: [discourse + sso + username](https://community.metabrainz.org/search?context=topic&context_id=609069&q=%23site-discussion%20tags%3Adiscourse%2Bsso%2Busername&skip_context=true)

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### Author: ![user2](https://community.metabrainz.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/ecb155/32.png) [@user2](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/user2)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2025, 2:28am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/non-ascii-user-names/609069/4 "2025-11-18T02:28:51Z")

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I agree with @jesus2099. Option C would be the best solution. My username on MusicBrainz is [לוכסן](https://musicbrainz.org/user/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9B%D7%A1%D7%9F), but here on Discourse it was for some reason set to “user2”, which I am unable to fix.