So, a year and some sundry change ago, I was divorced. At the time, I elected not to change my name back to my maiden name. Changing it when I got married was kind of a hassle, especially with work, and I wasn’t ever terribly thrilled with my maiden name.
Unfortunately, now that some time has passed, I feel differently. The divorce is more than final, and it’s not like there’s any real or additional bitterness, but it’s just not my last name. Moreover, it’s not my family’s last name, nor does it really even match my family’s background. I feel weird giving it over the phone, and weird saying it’s my name.
So. . .I figure that I’m probably going to change my name. I don’t really want to change back to my maiden name, if only because that last name is never pronounced correctly, and is really, really bad-sounding when mispronounced by someone with a Chicago area accent. I’ve never really liked it.
The thing is, I’m not sure of what to do. I could just adopt my middle name (Elizabeth) as my last name, as that’s almost kinda-sorta-acceptable, but that leaves me without a middle name. I have a nickname that was valid in high school, and that I’ve started to use again recently, that is a derivative of a men’s name that could be used as a surname, so I could use that. Or I could use the middle name as a last name, and adopt the nickname name as a middle name.
I just have a couple of questions:
1.) How hard is it to make a name change? Does it make a difference if you’re just changing part of your name, or all of it?
2.) How pretentious is it to have a given name as your surname?
3.) How the hell would I handle it at work? Or could I just elect not to deal with it until I change jobs or go back to school?