I ask as I’m contemplating it and wanted to know how people found it. Was it really hard to adjust to the new name? How long before you started answering to it and stopped introducing yourself as the old name?
Has anyone changed their second name by deepole just because they could and wanted a new name?
Deed Poll.
My brother-in-law and sister changed their surname by one letter, because they felt it was something over which their (at the time unborn) children would have trouble at school. I’m afraid I can’t give the details.
I have no idea what “deepole” means. Can you please explain?
Thanks.
I don’t know about Deed Poll, but in the U.S. you go through a legal process as well. My sister did it. I think they basically want to know if you’re changing your name in order to defraud people. My sister didn’t even tell the family. We found out quite by accident.
I still call her by her birth name, but I introduce her to people by her chosen name. She changed both her first and last name. The family still hasn’t quite recovered.
My mother changed her name legally when I was in my teens… but not her last name. I don’t remember all the details, but really she was just updating the legal records to the form of her name that she’d been insisting people use for years… cutting out a middle name that she’d always hated, along with more than half of her first name, (Like turning Elizabeth to Beth, but not that one.) She might have kept her maiden name as an additional name when she got married, I kind of think so, so to extend the metaphor it would have been something like:
Elizabeth Muriel Anne Johnson Smith
to
Beth Anne Smith
(And she’s now very insistent about people using both of the first names that she kept. 
) I think I was considering doing a legal name change at the same time, but I didn’t, and in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t.
PS: I don’t think that deed polls are used to change names here in Canada, so I’m not sure if this was helpful, but I felt like sharing anyway. 
I changed my name twice. When my first husband and I got married, I didn’t take his name and he didn’t take mine, so we picked a third name. I went through a legal name change and then he took my name.
He still uses it. I then went through another name change after divorce back to my maiden name.
It isn’t deed poll, cause that isn’t how its done here (here its a court appearance). Its kind of a pain in the butt to change your name, but it doesn’t take that long to get used to it. However, have good reasons for doing it. I kept my maiden name when I got remarried. I know a lot of people who changed their last name - my mother for similar reasons to Mangetout’s relations, a few friends who didn’t like their fathers or who had impossible last names. Just choose wisely. Its a little less permanent than a tatoo, but changing it more than once kind of starts to brand you as flaky.
I didn’t change my name when I got married. I identify with my name and see no good reason to change it. My in-laws were (and still are) a little shitty about it. They refuse to acknowledge my given name. It kinda pisses me off, but I get them back every time I mail something to them.
One famous person who changed his name by deed poll: Elton John.
Situation for me is that I’m changing my full first name to the shorter version officially - from Robert to Bob (but not that one ). I was thinking about changing my second name whilst I’m at it as I’m not that keen on it, kind of like Phoebe did in that episode of friends when, faced with the possibility of calling herself anything, she called herself Princess Conzuela Bananahammock (although I’m not planning on calling myself anything like that).
Laurence Tureaud changed his name by deed poll, so people would have to address his as “Mr.”. Apparently.
I have never officially changed my name, but did go by a different name to a subset of my friends.*
It isn’t hard to get used to answering to a new name. Once other people are calling you that, it becomes ingrained quickly. If enough people are looking you in the eye and saying “Hey, Zippo! It’s great to see you”, you will associate yourself with the name Zippo.
I suspect that you will also spend a long time still answering to the old name if someone calls you that. Old habits die hard.
The strangest part for me was when worlds collided. If friends who called me Name1 were talking to friends who called me Name2, it got weird for both of them and me.
*I chose a single syllable nickname for sports purposes, since breath and time are short on the soccer field.
Again a bit similar for me when I stopped using my full name and started using the shorter version, more for past association purposes (had a horrid time at school with my long name, now I’m known by my short name so I can put that behind me). I’m now thinking of lots of names from books and films that I like and wondering if I’d like to be known as something else…
Wasn’t there some guy in the UK who renamed himself (legally) to something along the lines of King Playstation 2? I can’t remember the exact name so I am having no luck with a search, but it was something similarly ludicrous, and I’m 99% sure he was from the UK.
Ah, here it is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_1844000/1844194.stm
No king, just Play Station 2.
I go by 3 different names.
Butler - many of my friends, and online (not my last name, it’s a fraternity nickname)
Ted - my direct family (my given “nickname”, which I hate, and refuse to use outside my immediate family, excluding my wife. Given to de-confuse me with my father - Ed… didn’t work as I rejected it.)
Ed - the rest of my friends, work, wife, wife’s family, anyone I need to give a name to get’s this one.
I respond equally to any of them, though it sometimes has created confusion. Never had to do it legally though.
too many aliases! I could truely disappear, and easily respond to my new names!
I have a friend who legally changed her last name when she became a teacher. She wasn’t about to go into a middle school as “Miss Beaver”. She used her middle name and is now “Miss Brooke”.
I have another friend who pretty much legally has two names. Her first name is Waunita, but everyone calls her Jonni. Her husband is Vietnamese, and she took his name when she got married, but because it is hard to spell/pronounce, she still uses her maiden last name for many things (especially reservations!). Her driver’s license reads Wuanita Maiden Married, but her Social Security card says Wuanita Fay Maiden (which caused a minor rucus when they moved states and she needed a new driver’s license). She said it’s fun because she can be Wuanita Married or Jonni Maiden or any other combo! She also says it’s fun to see people stare when she’s called by name. Wuanita Vietnamese-name is really a fair, blonde, blue-eyed woman. Her husband is Dung, so he goes by Taz most of the time.
My dad, who is named Steve, went by Herb for a good portion of his life (I’ve never found out why). So he answers easily to both. He and my mom had been dating for quite awhile before she even knew his name was Steve. He even has a “full name” as Herb – Herbert Leander Jones. Which has absolutely nothing to do with his real name, but is what my Granny calls him when she’s mad!
According to the Wikipedia dealio, the plural is deeds poll. Cool.
–gigi, who may change her middle name someday after Grandma won’t find out about it
What Exit? changed his name by MPSIMS Poll 
A cow-orker of mine had his name changed for him upon immigration to Canada. Neither his first and last name were obviously such to the official who transposed them. Not to make waves, he now goes by his last name as first, and vice-versa. They f*'d up his birthdate too.
My cousin changed her entire name in the usual legal manner. Her initials are now X. V. Z., to give you an idea of the, ahem, creativity involved. I thought she should have a middle name that began with Y, but she didn’t ask me.
This brings up a question that my extended family’s been pondering for a couple months.
My father, who passed away about 10 years ago, shared his last name with about half his extended family (the same name as his parents and siblings, plus about half the aunts/uncles/cousins). The rest of the family has had a name that’s similar, but spelled and pronounced differently.
My father’s generation were almost all first-generation Americans, their parents having immigrated from Eastern Europe. I was always led to believe that the name difference happened at immigration, with a misunderstanding about the spelling and pronunciation.
I recently found my father’s birth certificate, and it turns out that his name, at birth, was the other spelling, not the one I’ve always known. Since he was the youngest of 5, this means they all changed their last name many years after the immigration. It’s totally baffling to us why an entire side of the family would go to the trouble of changing their name, yet change it to something very similar. It’s not an Anglicization of the original name, just a different version of it.
Unfortunately, there’s nobody still alive who can explain this.