[Kinjiru]

Of commonly available codebases/engines, I am really only familiar with LambdaMOO / WinMOO, but it doesn't seem to hard to this in that case.

For messaging/etc, you can modify the :title() verb on objects to look up whatever name the player has given to that other player (or other object).

For command parsing, it's just a matter of assigning an alias. I've personally written my own parsing methods instead of using the built in MOO stuff, but any way you go, this seems fine.

Generally in MOO, you're much better off to use verbs like :title() instead of properties like .name, anyway, for just this sort of reason. If you had built a game already but used the verb you can easily add such a feature without changing tons of code.