clients are free to map this however and they do, and have different leading suggestions in their profile editors that build different end user expectations. the meta data tags aren’t specific enough to express to a different client the intention from the user. I think if there was a third “mention_name” (not a third field for the end user) which can be mapped to the handle in damus but the display name in snort would allow interoperability of intention from the end user.

what the fuck difference does it make? personal choice and nunya.

Everybody implements "name", it's the basic thing and it's here since the beginning, "display_name" was invented as a Damus extra and never announced or specified anywhere, thus it's not implemented in many places. I agree we don't need both.