Dunno if anyone has mentioned this yet or not, but in the City Folk segment of the US Nintendo Direct, they talked to one of the characters in the Happy Home town, revealing a town name (Treehaus), which is 8 characters long.
Doubt they would have spelled it like that had the limit been 9 or 10 characters, so I guess it's safe to assume that the town name limit is 8 characters.
you mean New Leaf?
and the limit has always been 8 characters hasn't it?