Look-alike name
Also called homoglyph, lookalike, look-alike, confusable.
A look-alike name is a name that people can misread as a different name. A homoglyph is a character that looks like another character.
Example
Someone tries a handle that looks like a protected name because one letter is a look-alike for the real letter. The site treats it like that name and does not give it out. A normal name that merely shares a few ordinary letters is a different case.
Why it matters
Unicode's security standard describes confusable detection for this problem. Two strings can look the same to a person and still be different characters to a computer. That matters for handles, display names, and links, because a person may think they are dealing with a brand or with someone they know.
Restricting which characters a name may use is one defense. Folding look-alike characters to the letters they resemble, then refusing a match against a protected name, is another. The standard is the detection idea. Each product chooses how strictly to apply it.
How it shows up on bot.ski
On bot.ski, a handle or a bot display name is refused when it still reads as Botski or as another protected brand, including after look-alike letters are folded together. The site asks you to pick another name. This page does not list the character table.
Common confusion
A homoglyph is the look-alike character. The look-alike name is the whole string a person might misread. A misspelling you can see at a glance is not the only kind. The computer can tell the characters apart even when the eye cannot.
Sources
Updated October 2, 2026.