Alias - Rename Anyone

Alias lets you rename any player character. Give someone an alias and that alias replaces their real name everywhere your interface shows it - for you only. Nothing is sent to the server or to other players.

Useful for putting a face to a name: the guildie whose alt you can never remember, the friend who rerolled, the person you only know as a Discord handle, the ninja you flagged three months ago.

Right-click, name them, done

Right-click a player anywhere - a unit frame, a name in chat, the guild roster, the battleground scoreboard - and pick Give Alias. Type a name, press Enter.

The box is prefilled with any alias they already have, so the same entry adds and changes one. Clear the box to remove it.

It works with your interface, not just Blizzard's

This is the part most renaming addons get wrong. Alias does not carry a list of supported addons. It finds the names itself:

• Unit frames of any kind. Every unit frame ever written has to remember which unit it is showing, and they all store it the same way. Alias finds those frames and binds the name text to that unit, so the match is exact. ElvUI, VuhDo, Grid2, Cell, Shadowed Unit Frames and anything else built the usual way are covered with no addon-specific code.
• Nameplates, including Plater, ThreatPlates and Kui.
• Tooltips, including ones addons build themselves rather than using Blizzard's.
• Anywhere else a name appears. Alias searches the interface for names you have aliased and takes over the text it finds them in - so windows belonging to addons nobody wrote support for are covered too. Spy, Details! and Recount work out of the box, and so should the next addon you install.

Blizzard's own surfaces are all covered as well: chat, target and focus frames, party, raid, boss and arena frames, the guild roster, battleground scoreboards, the who list, friends list, group finder and inspect.

It never lies to your other addons

Alias only ever changes what is drawn on your screen. It deliberately does not replace the game's name functions, which would be the easy way to do this and a bad idea:

• Your damage meter still records real names, so its numbers, history and exports stay correct.
• Spy's kill-on-sight list still stores real names, so it keeps matching real players.
• Anything that syncs to other players keeps sending real names. Your private nicknames stay private.
• /invite still works, because the server has never heard of "Buddy".

Clicking and typing still work

Player links in chat keep the real character underneath the alias, so clicking a renamed name to whisper, invite or target behaves exactly as it always did.

Typing works too. Aliases are accepted as the argument to whispers and to the roster and social commands:

/w /invite /kick /promote /demote /ginvite /gkick /gpromote /gdemote /gleader /friend /removefriend /ignore /unignore

Targeting and following still need the real name, on purpose - those run through protected paths an addon should not put itself in the middle of, or they would break in combat.

Never lose track of who someone is

Because the alias replaces the real name, hovering a unit adds a grey Really: Name-Realm line to the tooltip. /alias who <alias> answers the same question from chat, and the options list always shows both names side by side.

Commands

/aka works as a shorthand for /alias.

For someone on your own realm the bare name is enough. For anyone else use Name-Realm, the same form the game uses in cross-realm chat.

Options

Every surface can be switched off on its own, so you can have aliases in chat but not on nameplates, or the other way round:

• Chat, and separately whether to rewrite names inside message text
• Unit frames, and other addons' unit frames
• Rosters and scoreboards
• Finding names anywhere
• Tooltips, and whether to append the real name
• Aliases in /w and /invite
• Tint aliases, in gold or any colour you pick, so renamed names are obvious

Built to stay out of the way

Searching an interface for names could easily cost more than it is worth, so it is measured rather than assumed:

• Work is spread across many frames, so a pass costs a slice of a frame rather than a stutter.
• Hidden frames are skipped - a frame you cannot see does not need renaming.
• Each piece of text is found once. After that it is corrected as it is written, so there is no ongoing cost and no flicker.
• On a machine that is already struggling, the scan takes a smaller slice and gives way.
• Nothing runs at all until you have at least one alias.

/alias profile reports the real numbers on your own machine, and every part of it has an off switch.

Supported versions

Retail plus the classic flavours - Classic Era, The Burning Crusade, Wrath, Cataclysm and Mists. One download covers all of them. No external libraries.

Known limits

• Two characters with the same name on different realms cannot always be told apart from a bare name. Chat and unit frames still get them right, because those carry the realm or the unit; a list window showing only the name cannot.
• A window that lists players but is not a unit frame is matched by text, so an alias that is also a common word may turn up somewhere unexpected. Nothing breaks; it just looks odd.
• Renaming is cosmetic, by design. See "It never lies to your other addons" above.

Privacy

Aliases are stored in your own saved variables and never leave your computer. No addon messages, no sync, no server traffic. Other players cannot see what you have called them.