Did you or anyone you know ever get a legal name change?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

My parents gave me a horrible first name. Anyone who sees it written cannot pronounce it. Anyone who hears it spoken cannot guess how to spell it. I myself do not know how to pronounce it because my parents pronounce it differently from each other.

Around age 30, I started going by a nickname, which I eventually forced everyone, including my parents, to use.

Around age 50, I purchased legal insurance at work, so I could see a lawyer for minor matters at no extra cost. I was diagnosed with cancer and decided I didn’t want to die with a name I hated. I wanted to keep my initials, and finally figured out what I wanted my new name to be.

I went from
Horrible First Name + Traditional Family Name Middle Name + Last Name
to
Nice Name Sort of Like Horrible Name (same initial) + Nickname + Traditional Family Name Middle Name + Last Name

I’m happy with this decision except that as I get older, I spend more and more time in hospitals and at doctor’s offices, where they will not call you anything except your first name. Since I’ve never actually gone by new first name, I sometimes fail to respond to it. My dentist calls me by my nickname. My veterinarian calls me by my nickname. Why the hell can’t medical personnel do the same?

42

In Spanish-speaking countries that would need a court order.

I got a name change that befuddles Hispanics until I explain I travel abroad a lot. My baptismal name is four words; no, not four names: four words, one name. Normally given as its “evident one-word abbreviation”. To make things more fun, the Spanish government in its infinite wisdom didn’t coordinate with itself which “evident abbreviations” to use in different databases, so the way it was printed in my driver’s license and in my passport were different (the screens did show the whole four-word name). Think María de las Mercedes (Mary who brings mercy/gifts), abbreviated Merche, printed María Mercedes in some documents and Mª de las Mercedes in others. People from Romance languages would look at the IDs and exclaim “holy bureaucracy, they abbreviated it different? :eek: :smack:”; people from other languages would think one was an alias, insist that the pairing wasn’t acceptable, refuse to give me the rented car… fun fun.

Now my official name is the one-word abbreviation. It will take forever to trickle down through every government database, and in fact some institutions have already refused to update theirs (which btw is illegal, but hey, they’re the government so they reckon they can piss on the laws), but at least I won’t find myself trying to explain to some foreigner that no, none of those is an alias, they’re the same name…

43

[quote=“StGermain, post:4, topic:792082”]

I have a friend who changed her name from male to female as part of a gender reassignment. The first judge she went to refused to do it, she had to get a lawyer involved.

I know someone who did this. I went with her to court for moral support, and in case the judge wanted to hear from someone that yes, she really was presenting as a woman full-time, and was using the name full-time.

We went and got her her a new license, then had a party for her.

A good friend of mine in high school changed her last name to her mother’s name. He parents were married when she was born, but got divorced before she was old enough to have any memories of “family life” (her sister just remembers fighting and her father walking out for several days). Anyway, she rarely saw her father, and didn’t want his name.

When my cousin was adopted at age 16, she took a Hebrew name for her first name, that her regular name could be a nickname for, and made the Hebrew name her legal first name, and my aunt and uncle’s last name her last name. She took my uncle’s deceased mother’s name as her middle name. She didn’t previously have a middle name.

They went to the judge for the adoption first, and when that was complete, to the beit din and the mikveh, and then went home and had a huge party. My first Simchat Bat for a 16-year-old. A year later, she had a first aliyah celebration, which was sort of a late onset Bat Mitzvah.

44

Our son’s name was legally changed when he was still an infant. This was necessary (or rather, desirable) according his parents because, going against the usual situation, where children take the husband’s last name even when the wife did not, we decided to give our son my last name.

But he was born in South Africa, and it was legally required there that he take his father’s last name. So we planned to change it to my last name back in the US. But you have to do that through a state court - which we could not do, as we were not residents of any state.

The US State Department said at first that they could help us change our son’s name, because that happens all the time - Americans living abroad divorce, adopt, whatever, and therefore names need changing, so State has the means to help as needed.

But when I explained why our son’s name needed changing, they refused to assist, because - and I quote verbatim - “That is not a conventional reason for changing someone’s name.”

We ended up paying an attorney lots of money to make a legalistic-but-not-literally-true case that we were residents of New Hampshire (I was partly raised there, and my parents were resident there at the time), so a NH judge could grant the name change. All of us, baby CairoSon included, had to show up in court.

To his credit, the judge was pretty cool. His attitude was basically, "WTF? Of COURSE you can name your kid according to your wishes - I’m signing the paperwork pronto. Now geddowdahere and let’s not waste the court’s time with this.’

We have all the documentation on file, since my son’s first passport and Social Security number were issued in his “old” name.

45

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.

No interesting story. Apart from the bit where I was explaining to my husband why I wanted to do it… when one of my “propping up my argument” reasons to not change my surname when married was because I didn’t want to go through the arse ache of filling out paperwork :smack: :o

46

When I was a kid, I wished my name was Ruth, and my best friend and I used to call each other by names we’d wished we had (can’t remember what she chose.) Until that one day - she and I had to go to the local bakery for something for her mother. My friend called me Ruth, and the lady behind the counter said “Oh, that’s my name, too!” I was so embarrassed, I never did that again.

Other than that, and going by a nickname for 19 years because I hated my given name, I’ve never wanted a change. In fact, I stopped hating my name at 19 because the guy I was dating liked it. (Yeah, I know…) He’s long gone from my life, but I dropped the nickname because of him in 1973 and never looked back.

47

Had a friend in high school who was universally referred to by her last name. Few people even knew her first name. Between high school and college she made it official. Her new first name was her old last name, her new last name was her old middle name. I assume she chose a new middle name but never asked.

48

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. I never used that name for any purpose whatever, but never changed it legally. My brother was born five years later and my parents put the old name on his BC. (When my sister was born 6 years after that, they put the new name on.) When my brother joined the air force, they checked out his BC and discovered the discrepancy. They insisted he use the old name, so that’s the name he used for four years. While in the air force, he learned to fly and got his pilot’s license under the old name. Then he got out, went to college, became an IT specialist and set up a consulting company, bought an airplane, all under the new name. Finally, it got to be too much of a nuisance to have his pilot’s license under a name different from his habitual one. Only then would the FAA issue a license in that name. In the meantime, the Commonwealth issued me a BC with my new name.

The other story concerns my son’s SIL. When she was born, her mother wanted to name her Megan. Her father vetoed this claiming that they would call her Megan the pagan. They named her Jean. When my son got married, she was still Jean, a name she disliked. When she came of age, she went to court and changed it to Megan.

49

Same here but a female name. I despise the full name but love the diminutive, so I managed to get my preferred name on all my ID except my driver’s license, passport and birth certificate. When I got together with my husband and we started traveling I paid to have my first name legally changed so all my ID would match. (Also so I could never be called the full name again, good lord I hate it so much.)

50

My mother-in-law, in the late 1930s or thereabouts.

She didn’t like her given name, and wanted to be called by a variant of her middle name. Think “Mary Catherine Smith”*, and wanting to be called “Cathy”.

For whatever reason, her parents actually opted to go through the legal name-changing process versus simply calling her by the middle name :confused:. So she legally became “Catherine Mary Smith”.

She was something like 3 or 4 at the time.

Me, no legal change (except for when I married), but from birth my parents called me by an odd variant of my middle name (which was in itself a family surname). Think “Mary Cadwallader Smith” being called, by the family, “Cwallee”. Even family members couldn’t spell it “right”. Sister Mary Discipline put a stop to THAT in first grade and I became “Mary Cadwallader Smith”* to everyone but family after that.

*not the real names!!

51

I had a friend named Kathy - not Kathleen or Katherine. Her mother had to bring in her birth certificate to get the nuns to call her by her name.

These are the same nuns who always seemed to call my by the masculine variant of my name for the first few days of school. Good times…

52

I know three different guys who changed their names when they married, to completely new names, not in any way connected to either their or their new wives’ previous name. Two have since divorced, but kept the new name.

I also have a friend who changed his name to a single word name, which contains a non-alphabet character. I’m not exactly sure why; it was long before I met him, he doesn’t welcome curiosity in such matters, and I figure it’s his business. He carries a lot of documentation and shows up very early for international flights, because officials look at his passport and go :eek: :confused: “That can’t be real”.

In fact, I know quite a few people who have legally changed their name, mostly circus people who adopted a variant of their stage name, or trans people.

53

Ref shoeless back in post #3. My wife’s birth name was another long convoluted Italian one. So after we’d met but long before we’d thought of getting married she changed it to a much simpler Anglicization. Which had been her college nickname anyhow.

We decided to get married a couple years later and she took my name then, erasing the change she’d made. In many ways my name was less aesthetically pleasing than her adopted name.

As she often commented to friends both before and after the wedding: “Name changes cost $100 at the courthouse and take 20 minutes. If your name bugs you somehow, why *not *fix it? It isn’t hard; most people should probably do it.”
One of my wife’s cousins, born with yet another purebred Italian mouthful of a name married some guy and took his name. Then divorced the schmuck a few years later & didn’t want to keep his name, nor did she much want her old one back. This was a couple years after the original Star Wars movie came out. She wasn’t a raving fangirl, but something resonated with her, the movie, & the zeitgeist. She kept her given first name but her last name promptly became “Starwalker”.

She later married another guy but refused to take his name. Twenty years later they’re still married and she’s still a Starwalker. In fact she tends to use it kinda like Prince did his name. There’s no doubt she’s got a real first name that family & close friends still use, but she introduces herself as “Starwalker” with no elaboration on whether that’s her first, last or only name. For most social purposes it’s the only name she has.

54

I worked with a guy in the 90s, he legally changed his name to “Palm Tropix”. Yep, he’s batshit.

55

I think someone I knew changed his name officially, but it may have just been colloquially and professionally. He happened to have a distinctive name that was an exact match to somebody else who was not only in the same industry - Television production - but they knew and worked with each other. So Ian changed his name to Eli, but kept the same surname, and though I only knew him a short time in the 90s, many of his older friends would still call him by his original name.

56

I hear you. I use my middle name, have always used my middle name for everything, have been called by my middle name since birth, and generally have no need to ever change it, even my bank has “Mona LISA Simpson, goes by LISA” show up. Why the hell do I have to be called Mona at the doctors?

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.

I probably should change my name at some point, I fear being in a head injury situation and not recognizing when they call me first name, and being misdiagnosed as more confused than I actually am. ( “hashtag nursefears”)

*The nickname is the main reason I dislike my first name. I never used it, I never think of it as my name, I am mainly indifferent to the name …in its full form. The nickname is another thing all together and it manages to pretty much piss off every leftist, feminist, not interested in fashion, not interested in mass consumerism, women are not delicate objects not traditionally pretty sort of ideology I have.

57

I had a horrible relationship with my father. My grandad (mothers side) is someone I alway looked up to. After my father died I legally changed my last name to my mothers maiden name.

58

Due to an autocratic grandfather, my parents entered one name on my birth certificate, but called me another. I didn’t find out until I was 13.

By that time, all my personal and school records were in the name my parents wanted me to have in the first place, and my grandfather was dead. I saw no reason to use the “real” name except where a birth certificate was mandatory. Even then (driver’s license), I could have it changed for a small fee, so my driver’s license, the principal ID, in 3 states never showed my birth name.

No problem, for 50 years. Mortgage and personal loans, credit cards, bank accounts, real property purchases and sales, no problem. Then came 9/11, and the state accused me of being a terrorist due to an apparent name mis-match and refused to renew my driver’s license.

So 60 years later, I, legally, with a court order, changed it to the name I always used from my year zero. Being a terrorist was not as much fun as I hoped.

59

Shortly before we met, my current wife [Call her Susan for now] had reconnected with her biological father and, during her divorce from …ehhh…'my predecessor, I guess (That sounds very objectifying)… she decided to change her family surname to her biological father’s name, rather than what she grew up with or what she had married into.

So we dated and even lived together for several years and when she accepted my marriage proposal she insisted on keeping her biological father’s surname. I had noted on several occasions that I felt the only situation a person would have a strong reason for retaining a surname was to maintain an association with publications or artistic works or other products that were, in consumers’ or audience’s or fellow researchers’ minds, connected to that name. So I had no problem with her wanting to take my surname or retain her own.

And then some scandal occurred amongst distant relatives so that local newspaper headlines were announcing “[Plaintiff] to Sue [Surname] for _____” and that meant the first things that popped up in an Internet search of my wife’s name was “…Sue [Surname] for ______” and those scandalous headlines.

So, in order to distance herself from a scandal that already had nothing at all to do with her in the first place – but still happened to have her first and last names in scandalous headlines – my wife changed her mind and took my surname.

It’s easier to spell, anyway.

Long before I met my wife, I was in a martial arts class in San Diego and one of my fellow students thoroughly idolized our instructor. [He was awesome enough to become the next Grandmaster of our style but, to his credit, didn’t encourage the fandom that a lot of people seemed to shower upon him.] But this one fellow in the studio was so devoted to our instructor that he had his very German/Jewish last name changed to our instructor’s very Japanese surname, resulting in a juxtaposed “Moishe Nakatome” kind of name. When asked about the student’s legal action, our instructor would shrug and say, “Yeah, I got a letter from the courts. It’s not like he’ll inherit anything from me since I’ve got nothing to give, and it’s not like I could have stopped him.” And then he would change the subject.

That wasn’t exactly true; we knew he had been given notice by the courts in case he wanted to stop the process or register an objection. But our instructor’s attitude seemed like, “It’s a dubious honor and there’s no point in encouraging or discouraging the action. So I said nothing.”

I always wondered why my mother had the Social Security Numbers of her children included in her Will and Living Will documents. Post #6 above reminds me of why that was a good idea.
—G!
They got a name
for the winners
in the world

I want a name
when I lose…

…–Donald Fagan (Steely Dan)
…Deacon Blues
…Aja

60

Remember Cassius Clay going to Muhammad Ali? Around the same time a guy I know changed his name to something similar, so the dismay of his parents. Weirdly, he changed back to his original name when his mother died some forty years later.

Someone I work with changed her last name to a number - 009. People constantly pronounce it Oog.