Discord scrapped the four-digit discriminator system in May 2023. Before that, you could be Pixel#4321 and ten other people could also be Pixel with different numbers. After: one global namespace, lowercase only, first-come-first-served.
Two consequences for picking a name today:
Short clean names are gone. "alex", "max", "luna" — all taken since the first migration weekend. If you want a 4-letter handle in 2026, you need to invent a word.
Capital letters don't help. The system normalizes to lowercase before checking uniqueness, so "Alex" and "alex" are the same row.
What still works:
1. Combine two short words — "mossfox", "tinyloop", "embercat". Two-syllable compounds usually still have openings. 2. Add a single number suffix — "mossfox7", "embercat9". Avoid 69, 420, 007 — they read tryhard. A single digit looks intentional. 3. Use a period as a separator — "moss.fox" is allowed and reads cleaner than "mossfox" in some Discord display renderers. 4. Skip leetspeak — "m0ssf0x" looks like a 2007 Xbox Live handle. Stay readable.
The PickName generator runs every candidate through the Discord rules (lowercase, 2 to 32 characters, allowed character set) and shows you a green check when it would survive Discord's signup flow. That doesn't tell you availability — only Discord's actual signup tells you that — but it tells you the name could be valid, which is half the battle.
For more on platform rules, see our character limits reference.