Who here has legally changed their name?

[rbroome]

I met someone recently who hasn’t changed his last name. Somewhat confusingly, his brother has. Makes for a confusing family get together…

[Die_Capacitrix]

As many newlywed women do, I changed my name when I got married. I set my maiden name as a second middle name and took my husband’s last name.

Since then, I got a passport and moved to Switzerland.

My first name has a capital letter in it, without a space. Sort of like McCheese.

Passport and Swiss legal papers all have Mc Cheese. My birth certificate is written MCCHEESE. No idea if this will give me problems some day.

Other non-official paperwork is a mix of McCheese and Mc Cheese.

[The_Maple_Leaf]

@Hari_Seldon

Not legally, but sort of. I was born in 1937 and my father was looking for a job. He had owned a service and gas station and went broke. After looking for a while, he finally decided to shorten the name so it wasn’t so obviously Jewish. He never got it changed legally, but it was not illegal to use a different name, so long as there is no fraudulent intent. This all happened shortly after I was born and the old name went on my birth certificate.

The result was that all my school records, SS number, all tax and other records, driver’s license, draft card, every official and unofficial document was under the new name, not the one on my birth certificate. In those days no one asked for a birth certificate to register to vote. Then when I applied for a passport, they were willing to give me under a name not on my birth certificate, but I had to find two people who knew me under both names to swear an affidavit to that effect. Fortunately, my parents were both alive. No one else in the whole world knew me under the old name. So I got the passport and subsequent renewals have been made with no further ado.

Then I emigrated to Canada and used the only name I had ever used and eventually became a Canadian citizen under that name. All went well until I retired and my retirement account became a life annuity and they wanted a birth certificate showing my date of birth. So I figured I would get a birth certificate under my original name and then have to explain the discrepancy. So I wrote the Penna. bureau of vital statistics in Harrisburg and asked for a copy of the birth certificate along with a check for the required amount and my address in Montreal. Instead of the birth certificate, I got back a letter saying that if I could send them photocopies showing that I had been using this name for at least ten years, they would issue me a birth certificate showing that name. I photocopied everything: college diploma, old passports, etc. and along came that new birth certificate. That was in 1999, BTW. I’m not sure it would have been that easy after 9/11.

So have I changed it legally? Not at all clear.

Arguably your name has been legally changed through a process connected with continually established usage of the new name. Like you said, it was first changed at a time when birth certificates weren’t demanded to the same extent as today. There was a time whan people had fewer (if any) identification documents and you could change your name, in practice, simply by using a new one. Even today, at common law, a person may use any name they want, even if it doesn’t appear on their identification documents, as long as they don’t do so for fraudulent purposes.

There must be many people with some discrepancy in their various ID (e.g. having a middle name in one but not in another), as well as those whose names were changed by the state without having to go through as formal a procedure as having to go to court, depending on the time, jurisdiction, and situation. Here are a few examples:

Elvis Presley’s middle name was A(a)ron. The doctor who delivered him wrote two A’s in his ledger but Elvis’ state-issued birth certificate had only one. Elvis wanted it changed to two A’s, and when he sought to do so legally, found that state records alredy listed his name with two A’s (no wonder, given that this is the standard spelling).

Here is what Wikipedia says about Johnny Cash’s name: “At birth, Cash was named J. R. Cash. His mother wanted to name him John and his father preferred to name him Ray; J.R. ended up being the only compromise they could agree on. When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, he was not permitted to use initials as a first name, so he changed it to John R. Cash. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he started using the name Johnny Cash.”

Steve McQueen’s full name was Terrence Stephen McQueen. His rather funky 1972 mugshot from Alaska (he had been arrested in Anchorage for drunk driving) has him down as “Steve T McQueen”. I am not aware of his ever having changed his name.

Another, very minor mugshot example: Internet celebrity Lindsay Ellis’ middle name is Carole. In 2017, she was arrested in her hometown of Johnson City, Tennessee, for public intoxication. An (official???) online record of her booking spells it without the “e”: Reddit - Dive into anything

[LLCoolL]

@Die_Capacitrix

As many newlywed women do, I changed my name when I got married. I set my maiden name as a second middle name and took my husband’s last name.

Since then, I got a passport and moved to Switzerland.

My first name has a capital letter in it, without a space. Sort of like McCheese.

Passport and Swiss legal papers all have Mc Cheese. My birth certificate is written MCCHEESE. No idea if this will give me problems some day.

Other non-official paperwork is a mix of McCheese and Mc Cheese.

My last name is akin to “mc Cheese”. I.e., two words, first word lower case. So I see all sorts of funky variations in my snail mail:

[ul]
[li]Mc Cheese[/li][li]McCheese[/li][li]Mccheese[/li][li]mccheese[/li][li]mcCheese[/li][li]Cheese[/li][li]Mc[/li][/ul]

And most memorably:

[ul]
[li]mC CHEESE[/li][/ul]

The latter occurred when I emphasized to a customer service rep over the phone that the first letter is lower case.

I also get the anglicized spelling of “Cheese” thrown into all the variations above.

It’s been a minor hassle on occasion over the years. (Mostly when someone says, “We can’t find you in our database.” Then I have to coach them to try looking under different variations.) It’s never occurred to me to consider changing it. I like the uniqueness of my last name, and would much prefer to keep it.