May I ask how many letters there are in your last name? Mine has nine letters, and it killed me to work somewhere that my username was "mschiral" and I had to type most of it but then stop two letters early.
It's like Shave and a Haircut without the "two bits".
I have a similar issue where most of the time 'surname+first_initial' means I end up with the last letter of my Surname being cut off. This becomes really annoying as because the email address is structured that way, my name on documents starts cropping up with the typo as well (as people will often just check the email address for the spelling)
Where I work, your username is automatically assigned in this fashion:
First letter is U or V depending on whether you are temp or perm employee.
Next 4 letters are first 4 of last name.
Final two letters are first 2 of first name.
It's like Shave and a Haircut without the "two bits".