Comment 35 for bug 956618

I agree this is a serious misbehavior and as far as I can tell (from the end-user point of view, not from source), this is a regression. In Thunderbird 2, if I typed "Bob", and the auto-completion served up a name I did not prefer, I could go into the address book, add "Bob" as the nickname for my favorite Bob, and thereafter typing "Bob" would *always* complete to the desired one. When I moved to Thunderbird 3.1, this was lost. (Still true as of 3.1.7)

I don't know what other purpose nicknames even serve, if not to be used for completion.

As far as I can tell from reading the various here-linked bugs on auto-completion order, none of them address the apparent regression in nickname handling.

(I think a future change to use frecency might work out, and one might argue that a nickname should give weight in frecency much like bookmarking a URI might, but given this is seems to be a regression, and it's serious enough (misdirected email), I would hate to see the fix for this entangled into a larger issue of frecency.)