Dr. Herman I. Libshitz is used to people giving him, uh, crap about his name. The doctor, raised in Philadelphia and now living in CHESTERTOWN, Maryland, learned early on he'd have to DEFEND his family's honor.

"When you're named Libshitz, you expect problems with your name," he says. "Can you imagine what a drill sergeant did with Libshitz?"

Still, Libshitz's foray into cyberspace proved more irksome than the teasing he had endured in his younger years. It started around 1998, when he and his wife bought a computer and tried to sign up for an AOL account.

"AOL told me my name was insulting and offensive," he remembers. "They wouldn't give me an e-mail address."

Libshitz fought and won that battle. But it was only the beginning. Fast-forward to July 2008, when Libshitz and his wife decided to upgrade their home Internet service from dial-up to broadband. They logged on to Verizon's Web site only to find that, once again, the ISP wouldn't accept their name for use in an e-mail address.