> Good call, we could do something like this in the template: "@{{name}}"

We do that and it's the problem ;) As I don't use the template here I have to manually prefix it with the '@'. 
There are two solutions:
1. CSS content
2. Separate element for the nick itself

Both have their negative sides: CSS content due to missing IE7 support and only partial IE8 support; Separate element due to another theoretically unecessary element.