# Did you or anyone you know ever get a legal name change? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2017, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082 "2017-07-25T15:41:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/61 "2017-07-28T04:08:18Z")
I’ve known several women who, after a second or later marriage ended, changed back to her first husband’s name because he was the father of her children. They weren’t necessarily divorced, either; I can think of one who was widowed the first time around. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/62 "2017-07-28T05:15:19Z")
> [@epbrown01](#): > > Someone I work with changed her last name to a number - 009. People constantly pronounce it Oog. Is it normally pronounced “double oh nine”? Are they a James Bond fan, but didn’t want to take his exact number? Oh, and I cannot think of anyone I know who has changed their name legally, beyond for marriage reasons, unless I count some Internet trans friends who I didn’t know before they changed their name. ---
**Author:** ![bobkitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobkitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobkitty)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/63 "2017-07-28T11:47:23Z")
I changed my first and middle name almost 15 years ago, because I never had an attachment to my birth name. Went to the courthouse, filled out a piece of paper that amounted to “I, X, now wish to be known as Y, and it’s not because I’m a felon dodging criminal charges or debts.” Paid $25, the clerk brought the paper in the back for the judge to sign, and came back with five notarized copies of my now-legal name change. Twenty minutes, tops- I walked in one person, walked out someone completely different. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/64 "2017-07-28T12:29:00Z")
Yep. The most difficult part: a month before I had my lawyer start the paperwork Fierra asked me “so what’s your middle name?” and I suddenly realized I’d never thought of one. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/65 "2017-07-28T14:07:15Z")
My mother did, when I was young. She’d never liked about half of the given names she was born with and went through the legal change to cut back to only the ones she preferred. Somewhat like going from “Abigail Charlotte Anne Winstead” to “Gail Anne Winstead.” And she’s particular about people calling her by both given names now. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Emergency911](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/43a26b/32.png) [@Emergency911](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emergency911)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/66 "2017-07-28T18:23:05Z")
A coworker, who had several brothers, no sisters, married a young lady who had several sisters, no brothers. His father in law approached him and asked him if he was willing to change his name. It seems the father in law wanted to make sure his name continued on. He offered to pay all legal fees and a lump sum of cash. My coworker talked to his own dad about it and made sure he didn’t mind. His father told him to take the money and do it. He did it, they used the money to buy a franchise restaurant and have lived a very lucrative life since then. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/67 "2017-07-28T19:23:08Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I know of two legal name changes. > > I was born in 1937 and my father was looking for a job. He decided to change his name informally from the very Jewish sounding name hoping it would make it easier (it didn’t; when he did get a job it was with my mother’s uncle), but the old name was on my birth certificate. That story reminds me of another one: an old boyfriend of mine was the son of two Holocaust survivors who went through unimaginable traumas, and as a result remained fearful for the rest of their lives, long after they had made new and happy lives in North America. They had a distinctively Jewish surname. Because of his lifelong fear of being targeted for his religion, the dad changed it to a generic English-sounding name. The son grew up with the generic-English last name, but didn’t feel entirely comfortable renouncing his roots - he even discussed it with his father, but his dad insisted that no good could ever come from letting people know he was Jewish. When I knew the son, he was a grad student at Harvard, in one of the programs that has all the students put name placards into a slot in front of them in the classroom (do they still do that?). His placard had always said, “Joe Walker.” One day, without saying a word to anyone, he quietly replaced it with a new placard that said “Joe Wasserstein.” That ex-boyfriend was a complete jerk in many ways. But I’ve always admired him for that. ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/68 "2017-07-28T19:31:45Z")
> [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](#): > > Once in an emergency room situation (kidney stones) when I was actually hallucinating from pain, and vomiting uncontrollably there was a delay because I didn’t recognize my first name when the nurse called me. Actually she called me by a nickname of my first name\*…when my chart had “Goes by LISA” scrawled all over it in big red letters. Been there, done that. Well, cwSpouse did it - I’d had surgery and a nurse commented to him that I was slow recovering from anaesthesia and not yet responding to my name. He asked “Are you saying (firstname)? Because cwthree goes by (middle name) and isn’t used to (firstname)”. The nurse went back and tried to rouse me by calling my middle name and all was good. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/69 "2017-07-28T20:29:24Z")
> [@Essured](#): > > I changed my first name about 8 years ago. I had always disliked my name, as it had some mild negative connotations and is the diminutive version of a common name. For example, legally named and commonly called “Lizzie” when most people are legally “Elizabeth” but end up commonly called Lizzie. So I paid my $90 and filled out a form and legally became the more formal, lengthened version (e.g Elizabeth). Funnily enough, I still hate “Lizzie” but go by “Liz” to my nearest and dearest. Is the negative connotation the fact that Lizzie Borden was also named “Lizzie” not short for anything? Or did you just use that as an example, and it’s not your real name? I actually had to get my birth certificate reissued because someone left the H off the end of my first name at some point-- something my parents didn’t discover until I was 9 and needed a passport. It wasn’t a problem until I was in the Army, and not even then immediately-- I had a driver’s license and a high school and college diploma with the H on them, and so my recruiter put all the paperwork through with the H, and it stayed, until I was with my home unit, and about a year after I was there, a new clerk decided she didn’t have enough to do, and decided to make sure everyones’ name spellings matched their birth certificate. I went down to public documents, and was told that if it was an actual error, and not a “name change” I didn’t need to go through the courts, just document the error. Well, I had copies of my hospital paperwork from when I was born, that may parents had saved in a scrapbook, and my birth announcements, so I could prove what spelling they’d intended, and I had a bunch of documents, from first grade report cards to my high school diploma to show I’d always used the H, and I submitted them, along with a letter of explanation. All I had to pay was $10 for the new birth certificate. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/70 "2017-07-28T20:34:29Z")
I changed my name because my birth name was John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Yes I’m kidding. ---
**Author:** ![CoffinMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@CoffinMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoffinMan)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/71 "2017-07-28T20:46:06Z")
One of my friends had an Italian last name which apparently got butchered by immigration when great grandfather emigrated to the USA - she and her sister had this legally changed to the original Italian a few years back. My mother had her last name changed along with mine back to her maiden name after she and my father divorced - I recall it took some getting used to when I moved from kindergarten to first grade. I had become so accustomed to my birth name that it was like learning something new when the change occurred. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2017, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/72 "2017-07-28T22:28:34Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > … > It wasn’t a problem until I was in the Army, and not even then immediately > … Haah! Nice save. Which reminds me … When my Dad enlisted in the USMC in the late 40s somebody inserted an extra consonant into his middle name. Which he didn’t notice until a month or so into the process (first pay stub perhaps?). Anyhow, for the rest of his three years in the USMC he was careful to always misspell his middle name on any and all USMC paperwork. That way everything would always match. In the downtrodden state of a USMB boot camp attendee he figured no good could come from raising the issue or ever getting an inconsistency in the paperwork. Even his discharge papers have the misspelling. Other than USMC, he always used the correct spelling. It never became an issue for anyone anywhere later, even up through us settling his estate after he died. Although he was fortunate enough to never need anything the VA did, so there really wasn’t any agency in a position to care after he got out and went his separate way. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2017, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/73 "2017-07-30T10:25:43Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Is it normally pronounced “double oh nine”? Are they a James Bond fan, but didn’t want to take his exact number? She pronounces it zero-zero-nine, and has offered no explanation for the change in the 3 years I’ve known her. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2017, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/74 "2017-07-30T10:47:05Z")
One of my mother’s uncles Anglicized and shortened his Polish surname, going from 4 syllables to 2, and saving him a lot of time since he no longer had to spell it for everyone. 😃 He was born in the US, so it’s not like it happened in immigration, nor did he try to hide his Polish roots. It was more than 100 years ago - different social climate maybe? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2017, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/75 "2017-07-30T13:48:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Let’s see… I know a couple who, when they married, instead of either taking the other’s name, combined their names into one (not hyphenated), and then both took that. A fairly prominent political figure in California did just that. Antonio Villar + Corina Raigosa –\> Antonio Villaraigosa, former mayor of Los Angeles, 2005-2013. ETA: A guy I once worked with had the unique surname Juve-Hu. Nobody was really sure how to pronounce it. AFAIK, everybody pronounced it “Yuva-Hoo”. Story was (I don’t know if this was real or local urban legend) that it was a combination of both spouses names, the “Juve” having originally been “Johnson” (the wife’s former name). :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Last_Glacial_Maximum)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2017, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/76 "2017-07-30T22:55:45Z")
Around 1960 before I was born, my Father shortened our Polish last name by simply cutting off the “ski” on the end. {A common practice I know.} My parents and three older sisters were the only people affected. As I got older, I asked about his motives {he passed in 1967 when I was still quite small} all I got as a response was that there was some sort of vague anti-polish sentiment in the Otis Elevator company {his employer}. I never quite bought that reason/excuse. When I was 21 and full of the righteousness of youth I considered changing it back to the correct Polish spelling but I never did. A decision I regret… . ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/77 "2017-07-30T23:46:46Z")
> [@Last Glacial Maximumski](#): > > When I was 21 and full of the righteousness of youth I considered changing it back to the correct Polish spelling but I never did. A decision I regret… > . And what’s stopping you now? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/78 "2017-07-31T00:57:10Z")
That was going to be my comment. As folks have said up-thread, it takes a couple hours and costs just the price of a decent meal. Go for it now if not having done it already still bothers you. ---
**Author:** ![Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Last_Glacial_Maximum)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2017, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/79 "2017-07-31T01:06:16Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > And what’s stopping you now? Our children are both over 18 now and don’t see any reason to change their {our} last name. My wife is foreign born and does not hold a strong opinion one way or the other on the subject. That leaves me. Now that I’m older, I care less and less about correcting a perceived wrong. . ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2017, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082/80 "2017-08-14T02:37:12Z")
I knew someone when we were both in high school that had was getting his last name changed due to family circumstances, and decided that he didn’t like his first name and so was going to change that too while he was changing his name. You’d think someone in such a situation might pick a name that stood out from the crowd a little or something, but no. His previous first name was a little over 100 in the list of top baby names for the decade, while his new first name was in the top 10. I recall his new last name was very distinctive (though I don’t remember what it was), while his old last name was a very common German name. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-or-anyone-you-know-ever-get-a-legal-name-change/792082.md?page=5)