I'm glad they were able to get this resolved for you - and hope they're able to find a way of coming up with a better policy in general.

[I do wonder how hard-coded it is in the systems - my workplace has absolutely no way of changing your 'root' username, made up of your legal first and last, despite the fact that quite a lot of people will legally change their name at least once during their working lives (They change the 'mask' people see, but every time I log in, I do so with my old name, and there are a couple of facilities I can't use without revealing my old name to the public, and ... go team technical decisions made many years ago by all-male tech teams and embedded in the code, word without end...)]