read (at TechTales I believe it was) a story about a company with a 2+2 naming pattern in which the two first letter from the last name would be first, so John Doe would have dojo@company.com. Alan Anderton was not amused.
We had a 1+3 scheme, which led to some problems with a chap called Tom Watson. We did warn them that they were invoking the four letter curse, but not too enthusiastically because we knew things like this were going to happen and, to be honest, it promised to be so entertaining that we didn't mind the likely extra work to roll back and adjust the script.
Tom Watson had been quite noisy, so we decided not suggest a 1+4 as a fix. There's only so much you can credibly explain away :).