[Paul_Heery]

Originally Posted by motion

I didn't know that!!!!

I've been using my address as lastname.firstname@gmail.com for all these years without knowing that!

This has been known for a long time. There are a lot of ways that you can manipulate a gmail address. Here is a Google blog post from 2008 that provides some of the ways this can be done.
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html