are you talking about "alias" that is stored on its blockchain?
if so then it is  weak in my opinion because if it is truly about mass adoption as you say it is then you will soon run out of easy aliases and will end up with long complicated ones with lots of characters. essentially the same as a "long address"!
the reason why a bitcoin address is long (160 bit hash) is because it is designed for mass adoption so that we never run out of addresses.

imagine there are 10000 people named Herbert who want to use Meritcoin. if i take Herbert name they won't be able to. the next person has to take Herbert + some other string and the 10000th person will end up with something that will be a sentence! so it would be more like first come first have the best names and the rest are screwed!
not to mention that it will open up ways for scam. what if i took the name of something or someone popular? and then scam people with it by asking them to send me money!