In message , at 09:31:21 on Wed, 6 Jan 2021,
Sam Wilson remarked:

On of the UoEd’s schools used to use login names based on initials but they
were at least 3 characters long. People without a middle name got an “x”
inserted, so S.... W.... (not me) was “sxw”. It looked odd when you first
saw one - “oh, I didn’t know Steve’s middle name was Xavier...”

There's still some cachet in having an ongoing login with "1" as a
suffix in Cambridge. Maybe other places too.
--
Roland Perry