$user->username is the username and $user->name is the display name (or nickname). The username must be unique and the display name doesn't. Users can change their display name anytime they want to.

Cool thank you.  I'll look into it.

I actually disabled the ability to change your name because I'm using Joomla with JFusion, Elgg AND phpBB.  So it was just weird when a user would log into Joomla with thier username, and then be taken to Elgg where they display their real name.  Then go into phpBB where it displays their username.

So for the sake of consistency, I wanted to only be able to show their username.

Thanks again.

@Cash what files to edit to change so it uses username instead of realname ?

I think it might be useful for Elgg to adopt the Drupal approach here, where the user's name is displayed using an over-ridable view, so the theme designer can decide whether to use the username, display name, or some combination of the two.

Well I searched the entire Elgg directory and looked for $user->name and I found it in several places because of the fact that a lot of plugins reference these files.  So I changed $user->name to $user->username and unfortunately nothing changed.  The site still worked, but the names didn't change.

I also double checked to make sure that Elgg's cache settings were disabled, cause I thought that maybe the old files were in the cache.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Do you have to edit code in order to display nicknames instead of full names? I didn't see an option for a nickname when I set up my elgg site. I don't want to display users' real names unless they make their nick name their real name. Am I missing something?