Does the law differ from state to state? I was reading about the comedian Harry Parke on Wikipedia (father of Bob Einstein of Curb Your Enthusiasm). His stage and film name was Parkyakarkus and the wiki says that he tried to change his name legally to that but was unsuccessful. Is there some sort of law against odd names? This would have been in California I think. In the UK you can change your name any time simply by using the new name, there’s no need for any legal process, you just inform those who need to know of your new name and as long as you’re not doing it for fraudulent purposes you’re fine. Some people get something that looks official from a public notary but it’s not necessary, (Although I’m not sure what would happen if you called yourself John Fuckyou or the like.) So are things different in the US?
wut
Bob Einstein is Super Dave Osborne.
were none of you alive in the '80s?
I’ve never heard of any law in the US which would prevent a person from changing their name to whatever they wish, so long as it’s not for fraudulent purposes.
I have heard that marriage is automatic legal name change (entire name, both participants get this), other name changes requires a judge.
I believe it varies state to state. There’s an application process and some name changes are denied.
In California, a name change can be denied if a judge feels that the name is likely to cause confusion, or might be used in a criminal way. For example, you probably can’t name yourself after someone rich so you can access their bank accounts, or choose a name that’s on the ballot so you can try and get into Congress. A name change might be denied for a child if one parent objects. There is also some language about giving public notice and allowing members of the community the opportunity to provide feedback.
In Georgia, there has been at least one case in the last year where a lower court had denied name changes to transgendered folks, and an upper court had overturned that.
I haven’t looked much farther than that. Overall it seems that you can change your name to almost anything, subject to judicial review. Different states have different standards, and some of those standards vary wildly.
Parke was also the father of Albert Einstein. No, not that one, he’s more well known as Albert Brooks.
Yes his real name was Harry Einstein. Nick Parkyakarkus was a character on a radio show then was spun off to his own show. Albert Brooks was very young whevn his father died.
You can change your name to Hitler. It does take the approval of a judge.
This is generally how it works in the US. You can name yourself whatever you please, but the flip side is that nobody else (including the state) is required to listen.
Post facto, I believe the general rule is that one who is “customarily known” by a certain name can legally continue to use that name. The other side of the coin, he is responsible for any contract entered into using that name. You can’t evade a debt by saying you are not legally the person known by the name used in creating the debt.
Even the US Passport agency has apparently recognized this, having issued a passport in the full name of “Teller” to Penn’s partner.
Well, you can use any name you want to as long as you aren’t intending to defraud, but getting it on legal documents for legal uses can be troublesome these days.
I have a friend whose last name is difficult, hard to spell, hard to pronounce. When she got married, she was happy to start using a quite normal last name that very few people were able to mispronounce, and she changed it on her driver’s license but never bothered to change it on her social security card/account. She didn’t care what name was on her paycheck.
Fast forward 20 years. All of a sudden, to comply with some subsection of the Patriot Act apparently, your driver’s license name has to absolutely match your social security name. So she tries to renew her driver’s license, and they say, “Nope. You have to go get it changed at social security. It has to match.”
She says, “Okay, take the last name off.” They say “nope, can’t do that. Need documentation.”
Now, in the quest of simply renewing her driver’s license, and removing the last name that appeared only on her driver’s license, she went through various things like, “Bring in your divorce papers” (she’s still married) and the like.
They wanted a birth certificate. She had one, she took it in. Then they wanted a birth certificate that was certified within the past [I can’t remember, something like the last three years] and the one she had she got in 1972, or something. So she got another one. And also, they wanted it from a state or county, not a city. Guess what, she was born in the City and Borough of Manhattan, and that’s what it said. Eventually she went up the chain until she convinced someone that she had enough damn documentation, that she couldn’t possibly be the only New Yorker with a Colorado license and this was what it said on them, and it was ridiculous. She finally did it, but it took two months!
By contrast, many years ago when I got my first Colorado license, it said I was an M instead of an F (and I didn’t even notice until I got a fishing license and they also put M). To correct this I went in there, the next time my license expired, and said, “Oh, look, you got this wrong last time,” and they laughed and fixed it.
Your statement implies the marital name change is mandatory. It’s not. Just wanted to make sure that was clear.
Yes, he was Super Dave, but he also appears frequently on Curb Your Enthusiasm as Marty Funkhouser.
It’s called Real ID, not the Patriot Act, but yes, it’s a huge pain. But your friend’s story is odd. Yes, the name on your driver’s license has to match the name on your social security card. Frankly, she should have changed her name on her social security records when she married, as that’s always been the case, and it could be a huge headache down the line when she wants to collect Social Security or SSDI or the like. But the birth certificate doesn’t have to be a recently issued one. Mine wasn’t. And what difference would it make if it were? The information on your birth certificate doesn’t change.
Regardless of which borough she was born in, your friend’s birth certificate should have read “The City of New York” at the top, under which is “Vital Records Department.” New York City birth certificates also have a line that says “Borough: Manhattan” (or Bronx or whatever), but as the city and state are on the certificate, the borough would be irrelevant. I can only guess your pal was dealing with some very ignorant people in some backwater Colorado town.
If your friend changes her name for any reason–divorce, remarriage, wants to officially be called Supreme Being–she needs to get her social security info changed. And yes, she’ll need to supply her birth certificate and all legal records of all name changes.
This underscores an important point everywhere. You can use any name you like under the laws of almost any jurisdiction in the sense that it’s not against the law as long as you’re not intending to defraud, but getting it accepted on legal documents may require some level of name change formalities, and today’s security-paranoid climate has exacerbated that problem. Well, national-security stuff plus things like identify theft and fraud.
In Canada, for instance, you can technically use any name you like but you’re very, very unlikely to get an official document like a driver’s license without a formal name change, and you definitely would not be able to get a regular health card or passport in that different name. The former because although health comes under provincial jurisdiction there is also a federal requirement for citizenship or legal residency status, and the latter because a relatively new law (passed by the previous Conservative government in the interest of national security) explicitly requires a passport name to match the birth certificate name exactly, no exceptions. Cite.
Also, the name change process in Canada falls under the jurisdiction of each province’s department of vital statistics, not usually the court system. In normal situations both the court application in US states and the vital statistics application in Canadian provinces is pretty straightforward, as long as you’re not a crook. I don’t know what the courts do but the name change investigation that Vital Statistics does is quite exhaustive.
i was born in the 70’s, my birth father’s last name was what my birth certificate said on it & it’s the last name I’d used until i was in the 7th grade.
we’d moved, and since my mom had divorced my birth father years back & remarried the person who i truly consider my dad (birth dad wasn’t around, had no interest in me despite living a few miles away) i enrolled in the new school under that last name.
when i was 15 i got a social security card using that name.
when i got my drivers license, it was under my birth fathers name (because it required my birth certificate to get)
after that i had jobs, checking accounts, personal loans, car loans, home loan, filed taxes, etc… using my step dad’s last name, which i didn’t have a picture i.d. to match it.
never had a problem till I’d registered to take a state mechanical exam & the name you registered under had to match the i.d. you brought.
i had to quickly get the change of name process going through the court so i didn’t lose the application fees & delay the exam.
i filled out the forms, got witness statements that I’d went by the name i was wanting to make official, posted the notices in multiple public locations, paid for the court to do their background investigation, and then waited the proper amount of time.
the day i showed up to complete the process i went in and the judge didn’t have me on his schedule, nor did he have any of their internal paperwork on me, he had no idea who i was.
when i told him what i was there for he just looked at me for a second & said something along the lines of ‘you don’t look shady, you’re not doing this to hide from someone or get out of paying something are you?’ i said nope, he took my final form I’d prepared from the packet, scribbled his name on it, said he was late for a tee time & headed out the door.
that whole deal happened in 2009. all the hoops I’d jumped through didn’t matter. just the stroke of a judges pen & an official notary mark from his office girl.
Some of us REALLY old guys remember Bob Einstein as Officer Judy, the fascistic cop on the Smothers Brothers show.
Yes, you can call yourself whatever you want, but increasingly, it is impossible to call yourself anything except a name for which you have a mountain of evidence that you have used before, if you expect that name to be applied in any legal sense, such as renting an apartment. Meet a guy in a bar and tell him your name is Abraham Lincoln, but good luck getting a credit card with that name on it.