Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-14217388-20151111050213/@comment-1038387-20151118202150

Micah.stachkunas wrote: I have contacted staff, but I assume you're right and I'll have to do some trickery. I just acnt figure out if I should close the old account, or just change the name. I just don't know if that will free up the name for me to change my new accounts name.

No, it won't. A disabled account name is not freed up, that's also not how MediaWiki works.