Dick Gaywood, somebody's parents don't like them.

So his name is Dick Gaywood? HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously, though, Microsoft is going a bit too far here. Even if it's just a joke name, there's nothing inheritely offensive about it.

same thing happened to my friend on AOL, they wouldnt let her user her last name "Cuntin" as her screen name (yes, that right... its an actual last name)

@WampaLord: oh, i didnt make that connection. Dick, Gay and Wood.... poor man!

And couldn't you have fully redacted his Driver's License? Now the whole world knows that Dick Gaywood is B, BE, C1, C1E, etc, not to mention fknlp!

That name isn't offensive. It's HILARIOUS.

Seriously, Dick Gaywood must have beat up every day in the sixth grade because of that name. He probably uses that as his gamertag just so he can troll sixth-graders into a game, and kick their asses in displaced vengeance/rage.

doesn't gay mean happy, too?

You'd think someone named Dick Gaywood would have bigger issues than whether xbox accepted his userid.

Okay, this is just taking things too far now.

@ laddibugg:

I'm not sure Dick (happy)wood is much better.

That has to be photoshopped... no parents would hate their kid enough to call him both Dick and Gay in the same name...

All joking aside, this whole banning names craze has got to stop. If someones name offends you while you are playing online you need to chillax...

Sounds like MS is running some type of program looking for certain words in gamer tags. We will know for sure when noted short track racers Dick Trickle and Richard Hed have their gamer tags rejected.

I went to highschool with a guy named Harry Aycock. WTF?

They banned my gamertag "Gaylord McMotherf*cker" for the same reason.

Homophobes.

At the risk of aging myself; didn't the Flintstone's theme song mention them having a "Gay Ole' Time"?

Poor Fred

i know a tamra allcock, her work email address is tallcock@...

I have a student in a class I'm teaching this quarter named "Harry Hiscock".

and this is completely ridiculous. MS is deluded if they think that gamertag is offensive.

@Mudd-Dobber: Any gamertags with references to the Flintstones are also banned.

Just wait until the holidays when everyone's donning their gay apparel.

@Verdigris: A quick search in Google shows a few other Richard Gaywoods out there. Is this instance Photoshoped, who knows, but there are parents out there who certainly hate their kids.

Well that's gay.

...

uhhhhh, yeah

My father worked with a man named Rick Hardigan.

i really REALLY want to make a welsh joke.

I finally can agree with microsoft on this one.... I totally find the name Gaywood, completely offensive!

Didn't we go over this last week?

@Verdigris: you obviously don't have kids...

Wow. That dudes parents must have really hated him!

Yet I still can't do anything about the guy who told me to Die Faggot Motherf*ucker and then proceeded to repeat "faggotfaggotfaggot" for 10 minutes.

You're not allowed to use your real name as your gamer tag anyway. Give it up, Dick Gaywood.

If I understand the previous gay gamer tag thread correctly, any reference to homosexuality is ramming the gay agenda down other people's throats (holy shit, that's homoerotic), and there are impressionable children who want to play Halo or GTA without being exposed to anyone remotely different from them and things that parents might feel uncomfortable explaining.

Gaylord Focker. Come on MS, chillax.

Err, I'm pretty sure these bannings are just automated based on user complaints. There's not some homophobic MS overlord looking to ban people. Users (granted from my Live experiences most of them are homophobic) report these people and after something like X reports the computer tells them to change their name. I know a lot of people here like to blame "M$" and other corporations for anything they can, but come on...

P.S. This name is HILARIOUS.
P.P.S. I went to high school with a kid named Mike Hunt(say it fast).

@spinachdip: Typically I would agree, keep the homosexual stuff out of places where there is kids. But, as a halo player on Xbox live, those kids are bastard children. They are mean, gross, racist, and everything else.

And I am against censorship, so, there should be some kind of waiver you check, that the parents have to do that says, "While your kids are killing bitches in halo, they'll also be learning new words, and grow custom to repeating them"

Personally I wouldn't let my kids play on these live games.

@petrarch1608: I LOVE IT!! we always joked in college that if shelly long went to vassar, her email would be shlong@vassar.edu

High school-kid named Joe Blueball
Summer Temp Work-CEO of BlueCross BlueShield NCA was Larry Glasscock.

My friend's brother has a teacher named Mr. Buhtsecks. Not kidding.

@spinachdip: You think its okay for kids to learn about *sexuals? You're messed up.

Reminds me of AOL a number of years back banning the word "breast" in their online forums for being offensive. They immediately got a ton of flack from the members of a forum on AOL dedicated to survivors of breast cancer. They didn't like having to refer to themselves as "hooter cancer survivors" thanks to AOL's censorship. Needless to say they quickly reversed their position once they realized how stupid they had been. However I don't think MS will reverse this any time soon...

Yeah, it's absurd. The last time they did this, it could be seen as coming from some thirteen-year-old with issues. Not so much with this.
Perhaps it's jealousy: wouldn't you be a bit defensive if you worked in a company with "micro" and "soft" in its name?

@apotheosis: I think they did it for the second part of your gamertag there, chief. That's a CLEAR violation of their TOS. Richard I think has a case, but your SOL.

I once knew a guy whose last name was "Cummings".

M$ really needs to be a little less liberal with their censorship. Sending a polite request to change the name would suffice. No need to outright ban them.

I wonder if they would ban the name "HomosexualDave"?

Someone in the support department at my company had to change his name for email purposes because customers' spam filters kept bouncing or deleting his emails based on a match against four consecutive letters in his otherwise-innocuous last name.

My next option would totally be Richard Fagwood.

@laddibugg: Your correct gay means happy. I don't know when or how is started being related to homosexuality.

@SkokieGuy: Oh no! Not my fknlp!

@Verdigris: 'Fraid not, my real name is Richard Gaywood. On the one hand, shortening Richard to Dick isn't common here in UK. On the other hand, yeah, I think my parents probably displayed poor judgement there.

@quattie: There are three Richard Gaywoods in Google: a cricketer (whose first name is Nick and his middle name is Richard), a 17th century sculptor, and me. All those non-cricket non-old-art links are me.

@katylostherart: You are the first person to even recognise that as Welsh, well done!

@DCKiwi: People keep telling me that if I use my real name on the internet I will die and my house will explode but no-one has actually told me why yet. I've been using my real name on forums for ten years now and I'm still not dead.

@crabbyman6: It's not automated, Microsoft are insistent all complaints are handled by hand: [www.stepto.com]

So if Gaylord Perry wanted to play XBox, he'd have to play as "MarvThroneberry?" Say it isn't so?

So, the next gamertag to be banned is: SugaYum

@ViperBorg:

You go right ahead and play apologist for the vast heterosexual conspiracy, pal.