Names and privacy

Whether a judge says your name in the clip is your call, and it is one a judge has no way to make correctly without being told.

Left unstated, most judges default to not using one at all, since it is the safer assumption when nobody has said otherwise.

Why it is worth deciding on purpose

A name spoken directly to you does real work in a clip - it is one of the clearest signals that the response was made for you specifically, rather than for whoever happened to submit a similar brief.

That is also exactly why some buyers would rather it stayed out. A name is identifying in a way a generic "you" is not, even a first name or a nickname, and if privacy matters more to you than that extra sense of presence, saying nothing is the wrong way to get it, because "nothing" from a nervous buyer and "nothing" from someone who forgot to mention it look identical to the judge.

State a preference either way. "Please don't use my name, just address me directly" is one valid line. "You can call me [name]" is another. Both take a few words and remove the guessing entirely.

What name to give, if you give one

It does not need to be your real name. A first name you use elsewhere, a handle, a nickname a partner uses - any of these work, and a judge has no way to verify it regardless, so the only thing that matters is that it is the name you actually want spoken back to you.

Giving a fake name for this purpose is not a deception of anyone; it is simply choosing what you want to hear.

If privacy is the reason, pick with care: the UK Information Commissioner's Office calls a name "perhaps the most common means of identifying someone," and notes that a social media handle, however anonymous it looks, "is still sufficient to identify them." A handle you already use elsewhere can point back to you as surely as your real name.

Changing your mind between commissions

A preference stated once does not need to hold forever. If you asked to be unnamed the first time and would like a name used on a repeat commission, or the other way round, say so again rather than assuming the judge remembers or will infer a change.

Judges who take repeat clients sometimes keep a short note of preferences like this precisely so they do not have to ask each time, but that is a courtesy on their part, not something to rely on. Restating a preference costs one line and removes any doubt, and it is never an odd thing to do even with a judge you have worked with several times before.

It is also fine to want different handling for different kinds of commissions from the same judge - named for a warm, reassuring register, unnamed for something more clinical, say. There is no single correct answer that has to apply across every request, and naming which one you want each time is a normal part of a good brief rather than an inconsistency to explain.

Why this differs from the judge's side of naming

This page is about your choice as the buyer. The separate question of when and why a judge chooses to use a name at all, and what it signals when they do, is covered in why a judge uses your name, or does not, which looks at the same mechanic from the other side of the brief.

If privacy is the bigger concern generally

If naming is one part of a wider worry about how identifiable you are to a judge, staying anonymous through a commission covers the fuller picture, of which a name is only one piece.

The same caution applies beyond judges. An automated score reads material the same way regardless of what you are called, and how that kind of tool handles what you send is worth knowing if privacy is the concern driving the question in the first place, since the mechanics differ from a person remembering a name across a conversation.

None of this touches a public leaderboard entry, where a score attached to a handle is a different, opt-in kind of visibility with its own separate naming choice.

And if what you actually want addressed is a number rather than anything a name would attach to, a measurement taken privately does not involve this question at all.

If you are choosing a platform partly on how it handles this, Rate Cock is a reasonable place to see how naming and identity are treated by default before you commit to a brief.