Need help to decipher "name" variations on Mac

Question

When I first set up my iMac recently, I used only Herschel Hochman to establish the account. By the time Mac was finished with it, I ended up with the following variations depending on what I was looking at:
1) Herschel Hochman
2) Herschel Hochman's iMac G5
3) herschelhochman
4) Herschel-Hochman.local
on .Mac 5) hhochman
And, whenever I see the Mac name on the PC as in My Network Neighborhood, it shows up as:
Herschel Hochma_s iMac G5.
Here are the specifics:
When I look in System Preferences under,
"Account", in the left pane it truncates my name as
"Hersch...chman" so I don't know what it is.
In the right section is "Name: Herschel Hochman"
and "Short Name: herschelhochman" (grayed out)
Clicking on "Systems Preferences/Sharing", it shows:
Computer Name: Herschel Hochman's iMac G5
Logging in from the PC, for "User Name", I can get connected using 1) 2) 3) of the variations above. I can even login if I leave the apostrophe off of the name???
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As a side note,
On My PC, my username is "Herschel Hochman", Administrator.
If, from the above informtion, the Username on the Mac is "Herschel Hochman", the same as on the PC, it is strange that I have to log in from the PC.
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I tried looking in the Help section, but I could not find a logical reason why Apple has to assign a "shortname"?
AND
Why does Apple give the Mac my name with the extension "iMac G5"? and then leave off the last letter, substituting "_s?
I don't know what all of these names are about. I understand that one cannot easily change these names without having to start all over again (whatever that means). Is there a way to simplfy all of this without affecting my ability to network the computers?
Thanks
Herschel

Answer 1

Actually most - but not all - of the names are easy to change.
Let's start with the one which isn't: your "short name." Without some complex UNIX voodoo in Terminal, that's your User account name and you're not able to change it. If you haven't spent much time setting up your account and importing data into it you could set up a new account, enter the short name you prefer, switch to it, and then delete your current account.
The name appended with "iMac G5" is your network ID name, and easily changed, as are the rest. Apple is simply trying to be helpful by putting a hardware ID tag in there for you - if you don't like it it's history. As for leaving off the "s" I believe that is simply truncation to maintain the best interoperability with older Macs and Windows systems - once again you can change it, but probably not make it any longer.
A true networking guru - which I am certainly NOT - may have more & better info for you. But as far as I know the short name is the only one you're stuck with. Hope this helps.