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

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
5731309018072125595
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
73010
false
false