Axis of email

My uni has a fairly random method of assigning email addresses. The typical email address is [first initial][middle initial][surname]@wisc.edu. However, sometimes it will simply assign [surname]@wisc.edu, which is the case for me since I have a fairly rare surname - not so much for some other Chinese students who have names of the lao bai xing, or "Old Hundred" common surnames. For some reason, instead of assigning an initial plus surname, the system gives some poor suckers things like "lee22@wisc.edu".

But the really weird part is that, one would expect that the first person of a given surname to enter the system would get their surname, and subsequent accounts would have initials tacked on, right? Not so. Steve's email address is his initials plus surname, but his second younger sister's is just their surname (the first younger sister went to UW-Milwaukee).

What's worse is that a professor has the bizarre ID of [initials][truncated surname which was short to begin with][2 - yes, the number 2]@wisc.edu. An UNDERGRADUATE who has a similar first name and surname didn't get her name truncated, nor the numeral.

One of my coworkers has been bombarding the poor girl with questions about flu viruses, molecular cloning, lab mice, etc. because he's a bit of a careless typist. One time he sent an email to her, then fired off some follow-up thoughts to the "real" Stacey Schultz-Cherry. The next time he checked, he had two emails from two different women beginning with, "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

My hypothesis is that in some period before a few years ago, there must have been some requirement for all IDs to be 8 characters, but still, it's very weird...