Napoleon never introduced spaces in front of a name, actually nowhere in the world you find names with leading spaces. It's not a bug, yes a bug in the head of the one who wants to have leading spaces or exclamation marks / other garbage.
Quote from cargame.nl :Napoleon never introduced spaces in front of a name, actually nowhere in the world you find names with leading spaces. It's not a bug, yes a bug in the head of the one who wants to have leading spaces or exclamation marks / other garbage. In that case the server should throw an exception telling you that leading spaces are not allowed.