In Messages, underscore displaying instead of contact's name

In Messages, for some reason recently some of my more frequent contacts are now displaying as underscores instead of their contact names. These same contacts still appear completely normal in the Address Book. In an attempt to rectify the situation, I removed everything in ~/Library/Messages/ where the message history and attachments are stored. Next I also removed ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook.* to force the Address Book index to be rebuilt. None of this has worked. Every time I try to send a message to my best friend, Messages will find the correct name. However, once I select his name, it appears as an underscore. This happens with about three or four other contacts as well. It is particularly annoying since now the conversations get mixed, almost as if they are all with the same person. How do I fix this? This is incredibly annoying as the underscore sync is starting to creep into my iPhone. It needs to be rectified...now...but how?

HI,
It certainly is a puzzle.
It is possible it is still a Font Clash rather that anything else about the Font itself.
However we could spend ages working through combination that you might have.
Helvetica Fractions is one that has caused iChat problems in the past.
If you have that Font turn it Off and restart Messages.
I would also use the "Restore Standard Fonts" item in the File Menu just in case something is missing that we are unaware of that is needed for Messages.
In the Contacts App > Preferences > Accounts how many accounts are active ?
Depending on the Accounts you list in System Preferences > Internet accounts you may list several choices here.
You may also show an "On  your Mac" option if at one time you had the Address Book here first as it were.
If these fail to help then use the Finder > Go Menu whilst holding down the ALT key and select the Library  that appears.
In the Library go to the Preferences Folder and find com.apple.iChat.plist.
Drag this to the Trash and then restart the app.
7:26 pm      Sunday; December 28, 2014
​  iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

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