Was a perfectly reasonable request on R.L.'s part.
I myself recently altered my own handle here for exactly the same reasons--keeping my full name off the search engines. I have no particular objection to being addressed by name in the body of a post now and then, since that's not common enough to fill Google up. Same for my album entry. I'm not hiding, just not spraying my name on every available surface of the internet.
The rule of thumb is if somebody wants a certain level of privacy, give it to them. Bowser, for example, is almost weird about it, but it's his call, and nobody else's.