Yep, and it's never become available. I opened a ticket and was told there was a character by that name. It was an alt of mine on EU. No player had my name, you can search via the ignore tool. Type in the name, it says account not found. It's a very odd and specific name, so the odds of someone else choosing it are vanishingly small. I haven't tried again lately, but it's so frustrating to not be able to use my name when no one else has it and it's likely just a bug. When I had deleted my toon, there was a hiccup in internet service, something happened so the deletion wasn't clean and now my name is gone.

ZiRM wrote: »

I've deleted characters to reroll them and never had a problem getting the name back instantly. Lucky I guess..

Probably because it was on the same account. I think the OP's problem is that he was deleting a character on one account and recreating it on another, and I suspect that there is a time differential between re-using a name on the same account and it becoming available on a different account - precisely to protect someone from deleting a character and losing the name before he has had a chance to finalise the new character.

Of course, the use of special characters may also be a factor. It's possible that they were permitted initially, but are no longer usable on character creation. That would need to be checked with support.

That possible complication aside, bear in mind with ESO that you only have to make a slight change to a name - for example with a suffix - for it to be accepted if there is a conflict with just the basic name. So, for example, if Fred is taken, try Fred chops wood, and if that is taken try Fred picks daisies - those are the sort of minor changes that can still enable you to use the initial name but with a distinguishing suffix.