So I hate my first name. HATE it. It appears, almost without fail, on all of the “Worst/Ugliest/Unsexiest Male Names” lists, and I worry that it might actually hold me back sometimes.
I’ve been toying around with the idea of changing it, but it seems so daunting, both from a logistical standpoint, and from the prospect of having to go to people I already know and telling them my name is different now. What would you think if your close friend changed his/her name?
And has anybody actually done it? What was your experience like? I tried a search but I get a constant “Database Error.”
If my first name was “Reticulating” I would definitely change it.
But to get back to the OP, I sort of changed my last name, but it was my parents who did it and my original name appears on only one document: my birth certificate.
But my son’s sister-in-law really did change her name. She told everyone that she was no longer called Jean, but now Megan. There was a story. When she was born her father wanted to call her Megan, but the mother objected, saying people would call her “Megan, the pagan”, which I think was ridiculous. When she went off to college, about 15 years, she simply told everyone that her name was henceforth Megan. She got the MVB to change her license, told Social Security, registered in college that way and she was off. Although I was introduced to her as Jean, it was only a couple years before I kind of suppressed that and I certainly think of her only as Megan. (Incidentally, her mother was no longer alive.)
Can you shorten your name (like a nickname) or start going by a middle name? I had a friend in school whose full name was David Andrew Lastname, but he went by Drew.
At the end of 8th grade, I switched from my first name - the third most common girl’s name in my birth year - to my middle name. So, I didn’t have to change anything on a form. What I do end up doing is giving a mini-explanatioin for official situations that call for my first name when everyone there knows me by my middle name.
How’s your middle name compare to your first name?
There is a poster who either recently did this or researched doing it. Now I can’t remember who it was, but I think she did say that it was much more expensive than she thought it would be- like $500 or something.
But now I’m very curious as to what your name is. Homer? Chester? Elmer? Adolf?
I knew a guy whose name is very eastern European. Bulgarian, actually. He’s pretty dark-skinned and “foreign” looking. He was afraid that in the wake of 9/11, he was going to be the target of violence. He changed his name to something very similar, but Irish. I had a hard time making the switch, and couldn’t really take him seriously.
Gunther, is that you? Even better than the middle name, at least in my opinion, would be to go by your initials. That’s not too drastic a change, I dont think. If you’re Gunther Vernon Smith, go by G.V. Smith. I don’t think that’s too awkward to explain to friends. And not only would that not hold you back, it would make you seem like a really cool author or something.
There’s only a cost if you go to court to change the name. A common law name change is mostly free. DMV will charge you for a name change on your license.
This. I go by a name that was not given to me. I’ve never gone to court, but I’ve never had my signature challenged, either–and I’ve been Stu for 22 years.
That would be me. It depends on what state you’re in. The best site I found is newlastname.org, although it isn’t completely clear on the costs involved. It wasn’t really that difficult, aside from the cost, and that’s with me having to deal with residual social anxiety.
I’ve been going by something different from my birth name for about four years now. It wasn’t really a big deal to tell my coworkers to use a different name. If you don’t want to deal with the legal hassle, you can go by whatever you want on everything but official documents.
I have not, but my grandmother (in her 40s) and youngest aunt (in her 20s) did - legally, to a random name just because they liked it and disliked their given first names. That aunt’s oldest daughter stopped going by her first name (which was a doozy - no one could pronounce it) when she was 9 or 10, uses her middle name now, but my aunt wants her to wait til she’s older to change it legally. They have no regrets and everyone adjusted pretty quickly.
If someone I knew changed their name because they disliked what they’d been given at birth, I’d have no problem accommodating them - as long as it wasn’t a ridiculous change (ie The Artist Formerly Known As Prince), in which case I would humor them to their face but make fun of them behind their back. If someone had what I consider an unfortunate name as the OP claims to, I’d cheer them on.
The first name on my birth certificate is one of those cutesy original names which prove that women who are six months pregnant cannot be held to be mentally competent. Almost nobody can pronounce it correctly on the first try, and most people have problems with it even after half a dozen corrections.
I did. But it was a fairly small change, like going from Sue to Susannah for example. Matter of fact, most people thought my real name was always ‘Susannah’ and I’d just been casually going by my shortened name.
I told some people, didn’t tell others. Most of my friends already called me by a different nickname entirely, so no change there. I wanted the more formal / lengthened version of my name for work and official purposes. My parents were unimpressed but got over it. I haven’t corrected anyone who calls me ‘Sue’. If the name you’re thinking of is quite different than your current name you’ll probably have a different experience than I did though, since mine was really just a minor change
A friend at High School went by his middle name Gregory, because his real first name, David, was so common in his Primary School. Turns out, Greg was also a very popular name, once he got older, but that’s still what he goes by. The point, though, is he does maintain the proper arrangement of names in official documents, and in his signature.
As for guessing the OP’s name, at my local comic shop in the 90s, it was run by Derek and Warren. I pick one of them.