diff --git a/kike.c b/kike.c
index 0bcec60..a09e62c 100644
--- a/kike.c
+++ b/kike.c
@@ -194,7 +194,8 @@ irc_validate_to_str (enum validation_result result)
 }
 
 // Anything to keep it as short as possible
-#define SN "[0-9A-Za-z][-0-9A-Za-z]*[0-9A-Za-z]*"
+// "shortname" from RFC 2812 doesn't work how its author thought it would.
+#define SN "[0-9A-Za-z](-*[0-9A-Za-z])*"
 #define N4 "[0-9]{1,3}"
 #define N6 "[0-9ABCDEFabcdef]{1,}"