Name guidelines for users and groups

When adding usernames, group names, and group descriptions to Google Workspace or another Google Cloud account, use the following guidelines.

Usernames

  • Usernames can contain letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), dashes (-), underscores (_), apostrophes ('), and periods (.).

  • Letters in usernames must be lowercase. If you enter uppercase letters when creating a username, they are converted to lowercase letters.

  • Usernames can't contain more than one period (.) in a row, accents, accented letters, ampersands (&), equal signs (=), brackets (<,>), plus signs (+), commas (,), or exclamation points (!). 
  • Periods (.) are not ignored in usernames the way they are in gmail.com accounts. If you create a user account called username, this user will not be able to receive messages addressed to user.name, or us.er.na.me, or any other combination of periods. To let a user receive mail with these variations, create an email alias for them.
  • Usernames can begin or end with non-alphanumeric characters except periods (.), with a maximum of 64 characters.
  • Because abuse and postmaster are reserved words, you can't use them as usernames or aliases. Learn more about reserved words.
  • First and last names support unicode/UTF-8 characters, with a maximum of 60 characters.

Group names and descriptions

  • Use up to 73 characters for the names.
  • Use names that make it easy to identify the group’s purpose.
  • Use no more than 64 characters before the at sign (@) in a group email address.
  • For groups created in the Admin console, do not use equal signs (=), brackets (<>), or ampersands (&).

Related topics

Creating strong passwords

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