Why I Love Legacy Names

My low-level Jedi knight is standing next to a GTN terminal when she's approached by a level 50 Shadow. I'm pretty sure that we've never met before. He sends me a group invite and I accept.

"Hey, what's up?" I ask.
"Hi Shintar," he replies (even though that's not my knight's name). "Nothing really, I just wanted to add you to my friends list and clicked the wrong button. Oops, hehe."
I look at him and smile. "No worries."

While our characters had never met before, he clearly recognised my legacy name and it reminded him of that nice Commando healer that he sometimes sees in warzones. (Or well, at least I hope that's what he was thinking!) One look at his legacy name in turn immediately revealed the Shadow as an alt of a Jedi guardian who kindly puts his guard on me in PvP every so often.

I really like how legacy names allow you to connect to the person behind the character without necessarily revealing all their alts to you or broadcasting every time they log in on any character. It just feels very natural to me, imitating the way in which you would recognise a familiar face in real life if you happened to run across that person. "Hey, I think I know you!"

At the same time it's completely optional, so if you want to keep any or all of your alts separate from your other characters, you can do so and nobody will be any wiser about them belonging to the same person. (Unless you follow some other kind of very obvious naming convention. Or you tell people.) Personally I'm proud to display my legacy name on all of my characters though - and every time someone recognises me (or I recognise them) it gives me a little tingle.