Now I have my first name as my GitHub username!

My old username was imjog so I wanted to change it to my first name jogendra but this username was not available (Already taken by someone).

I looked into jogendra profile and found that it was inactive since this profile created (Zero activity). Then I came across Github’s username squatting policy:

GitHub account names are provided on a first-come, first-served basis, and are intended for immediate and active use. Account names may not be inactively held for future use. GitHub account name squatting is prohibited. Inactive accounts may be renamed or removed by GitHub staff at their discretion. Keep in mind that not all activity on GitHub is publicly visible. Staff will not remove or rename any active account.

Immediately clicked the Contact a human button on the page and sent them this request to release jogendra username:

Hi,

I’d like to know if the username jogendra can be released? The user who has registered that username doesn’t seem to have any activity at all (from 2013).

My first name is Jogendra so I’d like to have jogendra as my username. Currently, I own imjog.

Please let me know if this is possible. Would be really awesome if it can be done!

Cheers, Jogendra

GitHub customer service is amazing, I got the reply email from GitHub within 2 hours.

Hey Jogendra,

You are in luck — we have classified the jogendra account as inactive and released the username for you to claim, as per our Name Squatting Policy:

https://help.github.com/

articles/name-squatting-policy

Be quick, as the username is now publicly available!

Cheers, Clark

They released my requested username. Finally, I changed my old username imjog to jogendra.

Now, I have to update my GitHub profile URL wherever I had given and change Remote URLs of local repositories.

Find me on GitHub with my new username here: https://github.com/jogendra

If you ever want to change your GitHub username, this post by Nikhita is very helpful. In fact, I was inspired by this post!