Well, prepare to get lots of spam. It would be sensible to change your email address as soon as Elaine gets around to changing your username, as you will discover.
I agree with you about the forum username rules. SMF, for instance, allows users to have a signon name and a separate user name, although I really can't imagine why. I know Elaine admins an SMF forum too so perhaps she knows...... And a lot of websites (Google, facebook) demand an email address to logon. It's strange, really.