Do character names expire?

I've used the same gaming name for a long long time across multiple games, and I used it in Path of Exile until the last race season. I got tired of deleting and recreating that gaming name that season and started to prefix the name based on the race, but during that race someone snatched the original name!

That character has been level 30 pretty much since the start of Legacy. Makes me sad to think my gaming name is claimed by someone who doesn't play the character.

So, my question, do character names expire? I'd really REALLY like to regain ownership of the name for 3.0 and have a permanent account with it.

Character names become available on accounts that have not logged in for 1 year. So if that is an active player, you won't be able to reclaim that name. You could always message them (whisper will go to whichever character he's playing if he's online and see if he'll let you have it since he's not playing that character.