Actually you can change the user name format to real name from backend Easysocial setting, you can check my attached screenshot below.

Hope this will help.

Yes, thats what I plan to do.
However, for the existing members, the names and usernames fields have different data in then.
For example, a profile name might be John, but the username is Big Mac.
Everyone knows this user by the name of Big Mac, they are friends with Big Mac etc They don't know that John is actually Big Mac. So before making the change, I need to make sure that the name field is updated with the current username.

I can do a simple update on the Joomla _users table and copy the data from the username to the name field, just replacing the current name information (its not currently used for anything)

What I'm concerned with is what impact this will have on EasySocial.
Will I also have to update the alias field? or any other EasySocial table?
What about the short URL addon?

Actually that is quite difficult to use SQL to update username into user full name custom field, you can check my attached screenshot below.

It involved 2 tables :
- #__social_users (user alias)
- #__social_fields_data (user full name custom field data)