A couple of personal points that I may as well insert here.
The account I'm now using, dang, was used briefly in 2010 by someone who didn't leave an email address. I feel bad for not being able to ask them if they still want it, so I'm considering this an indefinite loan. If you're the original owner, please email me and I'll give it back to you. The reason I want the name dang is that (a) it's a version of my real name and (b) it's something you say when you make a mistake.
Second, very minor, but I need to leave this discussion for a bit while I bike to a different location. After that, I'll be in the thread... but I'm not giving up my bike ride for this :)
(Edit: it turned out from old logs that someone had made a bunch of different accounts with names like "dang" all at once, so in retrospect I was reclaiming a dormant sockpuppet!)
Being a moderator and giving the name back sort of smells funny to me. Sort of like selling a used police car with the original lights and paint job to non-police? Just a thought...
Maybe limit the offer to return it to some time period, then keep it if you don't hear back?
Good point. I was thinking that because it's just software, we could restore the old account to its exact prior state. But the attention that accrues to a moderator account would make that impossible. So I guess I'll keep the offer open for three months, after which we can make some other arrangement.
I probably should have picked a different name, but I was swayed by sentimental considerations: it was my email handle at my first job, and, my code tends to be about twice as long as pg's so maybe my username should be too.
Maybe you could give yourself and other admin/mods a different color for your username. Then there can be 2 "dangs" (of course this may need some hacking).