I’ve had this happen as well and it’s odd because there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to why it happened. Either way I think the request the OP made is a bit over the top. Shouldn’t need to worry about losing all of your names because you took a year off.
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I am sorry, but I don’t agree with this. I don’t feel I should have to log into all my alts every X time to keep the names. I most certainly don’t want it changed to character activity instead of account activity.
Yes, that is true but it is not automatic I don’t think. I think they push a “Free the names” button every so often and it frees them up.
NOTE - the names get freed if the ACCOUNT is inactive. Not the character.
Character names are a pretty important part of identity in an RPG, for many people. Having that name still there when they come back is very comforting for people. The two expansions standard is a compromise between never freeing them, and eventually releasing some.
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Yeah, when a character is deleted the name stays with the account for awhile. I forget how long. A few months?
I got a name I wanted when I noticed someone deleted. I don’t know if it’s still this way, but at the time if you tried to name your character a name someone else had recently deleted it would say something different than if you tried to name your character a name that someone else was actually using. I noticed this and knew it meant there was a clock ticking down to the deleted name I wanted being available, and every day I’d try. Then the day it was available I got it. … And now I never even play that alt. 
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It would be fine if it was, “Log into WoW once every two expansions.” But it’s not. Like I said earlier, someone can log onto Bnet, play a game of Hearthstone, never have any intention of ever coming back to WoW, and keep all of their names. On all licenses.
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Not really, what we really need is for the character limit to be increased
12 characters kinda limits some of the creative/funny names your imagination can cook up 
I imagine something like a 18 character limit would suffice
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I agree.
The time to address this issue was back when the game had 8-10x more players. That had to be a real pain. I originally quit before BC so I didn’t really have any issues at the time.
Yes, really. It creates more options and it also allows people to use the cultural naming conventions of their race.
That would be a given if there’s the option for the space, hyphen or apostrophe.
So people get more characters, last names if they want to use the space option for that, and cultural naming conventions. All of it! 
Your name becomes available, and they will remove it from you if no account on your bnet has been logged into for 2 expansions AND someone requests it. If you have multiple accounts on your bnet, then you keep the name on expired accounts.
I’m sure this is working, because not long ago I got the name “Lioness” on a small RP realm, while “Tigress” was unavailable. I got “Tigresse”. However “Lionesse” was taken, which tells me that at some point “Lioness” was unavailable.
better solution we should have last names!
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Do you really want to keep track of 30 guildies named Legolas by their surnames?
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The entire battle.net account has to be inactive. If you play other games or log into WOW once every 4ish years than you keep your names. Even if you’re not paying for the specific WOW account the name is on.
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So as long as I log into Diablo 3 once every six years, all my names are safe?
Better than the 30 legolas’ with different alt codes we have now!
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lmao
That’s fair.
It’s not just inactive accounts. On Moon Guard people will hold on to dozens of names just to try to sell them.
Having an option for surnames would be great assuming wow’s spaghetti code would allow it.
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Last names are too limiting and not every race has last names.
Better to go with one choice of a space, hyphen or apostrophe. It covers last names, dual names and cultural naming conventions.
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No I’m not!
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I see more and more nonsense names every day. I really wish they’d release names more often or allow last names.
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I’ve never understood why there cant be more than one name used by players. The character name is associated with the account, which is already unique.
Character name is likely used as a primary key in some database/directory?
Connected realms could get away with hyphenating it with the original server names, but trying to do that with a Battle.net ID might introduce new problems with what information it exposes?
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