[Feature Request] Control Display Name for Contacts

Request

I want to have more control over what name is displayed for friends I have added to my contacts.

Current Problem

On the current version, the user’s display name is set to the name they have set themselves, until they send a contact request. Then, their name in the top bar when chat is open is irreversibly changed to their phone number until you add them to your contacts (this is useless to me). When you add a user to your contacts, the name displayed is overridden to show the First Name & Last Name that you have set for that user in your iOS contacts.

For me, this gives me some options, but is insufficient. Displaying just the First and Last Name doesn’t account for titles (Mr, Mrs, Mx, Dr, etc), suffixes (Jr, Sr, Esq, etc), or even set nicknames. Also, some people update their set name to show where they currently are or what they’re doing as well, and by adding them to your contacts you lose this information.

Proposed Solution

I would like to have a display setting to control what name is displayed with three options:

• Display Full Name (the full name I have set in iOS contacts: including prefixes, suffixes, middle name, etc)
• Display Nickname (the nickname I have set through iOS contacts)
• Display Name Set By User (the username the user has set in their preferences)

This way, I get to decide on the name I want to see. For people who want to have a name set regardless of what a user changes their own name to, Full Name and Nickname work well for this. If you want leave the display name up to the user, the third option works well for that use case.

Start by tracing how Telegram-iOS resolves contact display names after a contact request and how it reads names from iOS contacts. Review the existing settings and contact-display entry points, then determine how the three proposed choices should affect the name shown in the chat top bar. Done means users can select Full Name, Nickname, or Display Name Set By User and see that choice applied consistently.