Arabic Name Registration Limitations in WordPress

Arabic usernames are accepted by Listivo but still rejected by WordPress once they get long, because each Arabic letter costs more than one character against a 50-character database column. This article explains where the limit lives and why neither the theme nor a safe workaround can lift it.

1 minute read

WordPress does not allow the registration of Arabic names because of language encoding standards. We have enabled it in the Listivo theme, but one issue remains that cannot be solved without editing the WordPress core engine and database — which is strongly discouraged. An Arabic name cannot be long (usually a maximum of 9 signs), and that limit cannot be changed. The screenshot below shows the WordPress users table, where the name column is capped at 50 characters.

The structure of the WordPress users table in phpMyAdmin, with an arrow pointing at the user_nicename column, defined as varchar(50) with the utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci collation. — The 50-character cap sits on the `user_nicename` column; `user_login` next to it is varchar(60).

Arabic names are encoded in a different format, with each symbol taking up more than one character. WordPress therefore requires Arabic names to be shorter — typically a maximum of 9 symbols.

The same error appears in wp-admin

You may hit this on the backend as well, where a fairly short name still triggers an error about exceeding 50 characters.

The WordPress Add New User screen with an Arabic username filled in and a red error notice at the top reading "Nicename may not be longer than 50 characters."

Why the theme cannot override it

Looking at the WordPress function makes it clear that our theme cannot overwrite this default behaviour:

A code editor showing the user.php core file, where the nicename is built and sanitised, the pre_user_nicename filter is applied, and a following check returns a WP_Error with the code user_nicename_too_long.

Ultimately you could change this, but only directly in the WordPress core file:

A close-up of the length check in user.php: an mb_strlen test on the nicename that returns the "Nicename may not be longer than 50 characters." error.

Your only options

To summarize, the only ways to enable long Arabic names in WordPress are to:

Overwrite the WordPress user.php file
Modify the database structure

Both changes are strongly discouraged

Either change can lead to future compatibility issues and unexpected bugs or problems.

As it stands, using long Arabic names with WordPress is technically not possible.

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