Beware: Gamertag "nickname" and "nick name" are the same

This is how the gamertag system has always worked.

The system does not recognise spaces or capital letters so GAMERTAG & Gamer Tag would be seen as the same.

When searching for a gamertag you need to type it in exactly which is why it may of said the tag you wanted was available.

It is good to know. But this does not change the fact that the prompt with the warning text was misleading because it stated false information.

It stated that if I change my gamertag to "nick name" the old one "nickname" will be free to choose.

I think this issue should be fixed because gamertag change could cost money.

I am a little bit happy that it was my free change otherwise I would be extremely disappointed and ask for a refund or the help of my bank.

My original gamertag was 10 characters long and the new one with space is 11. So I think it has nothing to do with character limit.

And yes I was given that prompt where I was told my new gamertag will be "nick name" and my old one "nickname" will be available for anyone.

Interestingly I can choose "nickname" on the account where I changed the gamertag to "nick name" (for a price of course) but not on the other one where I intended to use "nickname" gamertag.

I want to ask, for the gamertag change, were you given a prompt like
this when changing your gamertag? Because my only guess of what it could've done is character limit since I've never seen this happen before. The character limit too is only set to 12 characters for the gamertag that'll for that says "Xbox One console and
Xbox Apps" while the second one is given a character limit of 15 characters.

My gamertag is close to my name. I thought it was just because of the coronavirus that something was wrong. But, I'm not getting errors. It keeps saying it's not allowed. I really want to use this gamertag.

There might be two reasons you can't use the Gamertag you want.

One reason might be, that a person already uses your desired gamertag in a different "spacing". For example, if you wnat to have "Clever Nickname" (note the space between "Clever" and "Nickname"), but someone already took "Clevernick Name" (Note the space
between "Clevernick" and "Name"), then all permutations of "Clevernickname" are blocked by that name. Be it "Cle Ver Nick Name" or "Clevernickname" or whatever.

The problem is, that searching for a Gamertag will adhere to the spacing you use. So if you search for "Clever Nickname" it will not be found. However, trying to use "Clever Nickname" is blocked by the existing "Clevernick Name".

Secondly, depending on what your name is that you wish to base your Gamertag on, it might be an offensive word in another language. Seemingly harmless words in one language might have an offensive meaning in another. For example the cartoon character "Porky
Pig" in Germany is named "piggy thick" if you literally translate the German name it back to English. Try Google Translate to find out what "Thick" translates to in German.

Maybe your name contains a string of characters that is an offensive name or word in another language.