A user has requested that his name be displayed differently that how his email displays his first name, How do I do that?

The user e-mail and full name are two different fields in the user profile. You can edit these in the Home/Studio/User tab. Highlight the user, right click on it and select edit. This has to be done in each of the environments the user has access to. You need admin rights to do it.

If you're using single sign-on, the full name comes across with the authentication token, so even if you change the name in the user table, it will revert once the user signs on again.

We do use SSO. but we may be talking about different user name displays.

I'm assuming the original question is about the user name displayed in the upper right hand corner. That name is controlled by the "Full Name" field in the user properties menu, and it can be changed as needed by an admin.

Yes, but in our instance, no matter what I put there, it gets overwritten the next time the user logs in.

That is the same problem I am having. I changed the first name of the user as Juan described - but when he logs in it still shows his actual name.

I have the same issue in the Dev environment (but not Stg or Prod).  For us, yhe problem needs to be fixed by my org's Identity & Access Mgmt group.  The certificate being sent has my old name within the credentials, which is why even if it's changed within Apptio, it will still revert back to the old name identified within the certificate (I just haven't gotten around to resolving this yet).  Maybe the same in your environment?