Those are two different characters. They are not interchangeable. It looks like the guy's name is Anton, a Swedish name. Thus he will create names with "å"-s in them if he wants to.
Will this cause any problems? It might. That still does not mean that "a" is a proper substitute for "å".
Should he have tried making a name from just English letters? That might have been a good idea. But that is a different recommendation than the one you gave.
"STARGÅTE", on the other hand, is an example of gratuitous replacement of "A" by "Å".
Comments
Those are two different characters. They are not interchangeable. It looks like the guy's name is Anton, a Swedish name. Thus he will create names with "å"-s in them if he wants to.
Will this cause any problems? It might. That still does not mean that "a" is a proper substitute for "å".
Should he have tried making a name from just English letters? That might have been a good idea. But that is a different recommendation than the one you gave.
"STARGÅTE", on the other hand, is an example of gratuitous replacement of "A" by "Å".
In Stargate, it's a nod to Earth's point-of-origin symbol being Å (well, it's not exactly Å, but it's very similar)[1].
[1] http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Point_of_origin
>It looks like the guy's name is Anton, a Swedish name
This Anton is Russian clearly. http://ru.linkedin.com/pub/anton-k/32/253/695
And Алёнка (Alyonka) is a diminutive form of Russian name Алёна (Alyona) http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Алёнка