Gosh! You do ask a lot of questions! LOL!

But its nice, in a way. Your so full of youthful energy!

Ok. First lets just get the labels done. I would use black, or they will look odd with your map.

When you've got them saying all the right things hide everything but the labels, make a new layer from visible, then show everything again but hide the original labels. This is so that you can work on all the labels on one single layer (the new one) while keeping the originals in reserve in case anything goes wrong.

Then, duplicate the new labels sheet and do a Gaussian blur of about 10 on it (Filter menu), then invert the colours (colour menu) so that they are white and make sure this new blurry white label layer is below the sharp black layer.

This should give the labels a white glow. If it isn't strong enough duplicate the blurry white labels sheet.

There are many other ways of creating this glow, but I find this method better than the actual glow filter for some strange reason. Its more even.

As you get more practiced and more confident with everything you could even try using different blend modes on that fuzzy white layer, like overlay, or grain merge, so that the background is more subtly affected than if you just leave it plain white.

I hope I've described it all well enough?

...

If you really don't like your name and want to change it, all you have to do is ask for help in the Technical Support forum. I think there are already a couple of threads there. Most recently Azélor changed his name from the version without the accent.

I'd have a nice long think about what you want to change it to before you make any requests, though