Quote Originally Posted by geekgirlau
I generally use the API method, although this doesn't always result in a name. For example, in my current contract login names consist of a single character to identify the site, followed by a randomly generated number. So you can determine a unique identifier for the user, without actually capturing their name.

Can I ask why you want the name?
There is no one answer to your question. I have wanted the user's "real" name on a number of different applications and a unique name (or something) on others. I fiddled with various approaches and often used email address as the one unique identifier. Back before ol was security nuts, and since most users run single profiles, fetching an email address was pretty easy.. It is now more a matter of personal curiosity and that funny drive to finally find a way.