i know this has been talked about over and over, but i wanted to share some tips for those who rather not use their real name. It all comes down to your specific situation.
first up, signing up to be a mail decoy (usa only as far as i know) there are multiple companies that do this.
basically they want to know how long certain pieces of mail takes to get to your area and in what condition, in return for this you get paid usually about .25c per piece. usually they start by mailing you post cards, and magazines and sometimes packages and other random mailings. they use a special name, usually in some sort of code that allows them to keep track.
two services i know of are as follows.
http://www.hausertrack.com/decoycheck/
http://www.usmonitor.com/agentform/
for more info visit their homepage or google mail decoy.
another tip is to use a variant or misspelling of your real name, sure its your name, but if something goes wrong and you arent sure if a package you are getting is from a DNM vendor, you can look at it and tell right away based on the name.
IE your name is john smith, for your dnm orders use smith john or smithy john smith johns, ect you can see where im going, just enough change to where you can tell you used on the dnm, but not enough change where your mailman or post office will think its for someone else.
inventing a new person. you can talk to your post office and let them know someone is staying with you for an undetermined amount of time and would like their name noted so that they know it should be delivered there. then you can pretty much use any name you want. ive heard of some post offices requesting I.Ds but when ive tried this i was never asked for one, and ive tried with po boxes as well.
C/O using care of can be handy sometimes, again as a marker to know what is in the package from the outside, you can use your real name or variant thereof and then use c/o, you can also make up a name, this helps if you are trying to create a fake persona.
i hope some of these tricks help. like i said it comes down to your specific situation, if for any reason you have a feeling that you wont get your package if its not in your name, then just use your real name.
I always use a nickname that's clearly identifiable as a variation of my full name. That way I can quickly look at the package, and know it's either from a close friend or from a vendor. I'm always paranoid about a package not being delivered if I don't use my real name.
Our mailbox has a little card in it with my room mate's name and my name. I feel like you could probably just write down another name, and tell the mail carrier you've got someone staying with you for awhile.
Honestly, I don't think my postman even checks anymore. We've been getting mail here for years for several previous residents. I've probably seen 6-7 different names in our mailbox in the past month.
Thanks for sharing the mail decoy services, I'm very interested in this.