Have you ever changed your name?

Informally as a 7 year old I changed my name to Troy.. and then to Rex.. I think there was some cowboy show that had a Rex and I wanted to be just like that guy. Legally? Heck no.. I love my name.

My Grandmother changed mine when I got in trouble. My name is Shannon Lorraine, she would always call me Shannon Lou just before I got the flyswat!

I’ve had several different nicknames, and for various reasons. One for my time in the mail art underground culture, and several more online just for security reasons. I go by the name Zee online and it is a one of my favorite nicknames in real life, but it is in no way, shape, or form even close to my given name. For awhile there, more people knew me as Zee than as my given name. Which is of course, as common as sidewalk cracks.

I changed my name when I got married, by hyphenating my last name with my husband’s last name. It is quite typical for a woman to change her name at marriage, but most deep-six their maiden name and opt for their husband’s last name. Some of my friends thought I was strange to hyphenate our names, but my explanation seemed to mollify them. I published a number of scientific papers under my maiden name, and more under my new married name, and it was easier for fellow scientists to find my work if the beginning of my name stayed the same.

Nonetheless, many folks disregarded the hyphen and simply call me Mrs. Husband’s Last Name. This is no problem. As my husband says, “Call me anything you want, just don’t call me late for dinner.”

I changed my name when I got married and now am in the process of changing it back. It should be interesting. My ex recently made a check out to me using my married name, it was a challenge because my id is back to my maiden name. I think he is pretty bummed out that I went back, but I figure that I had his name long enough and it was time to return to my own.

My wife was happy to change her name to mine, as hers was a sound alike euphemism for a particular nasty gastrointestinal disorder.

I accidentally changed the spelling of the hanyu pinyin version of my name when I was about 12. I switched it with the dialect equivalent. I now have english, mandarin and hokkien spelling of my name on my identity card. Yes, I’m gifted!

I have never changed my maiden name to my husband’s. I have a very unique surname. If I had changed, I would be just another Mrs so and so among a couple hundred thousand.

And I have also written a couple of articles under my maiden name. I won’t change.

I changed my first name for one year, when I went into Junior High School, went back to my given name when we moved. I changed my last name three times, to match each husband, and went by only one name for several of those same years. Now, many people know me by my screen name.

My real name is Jack, but growing up, my family and friends always called me Archie. My mom started it, since my dad’s name was Jack.
When I started working, my co-workers called me Jack, and now I use it as an indication of how well someone knows me. If they call me Archie, i know it’s an old friend.

I had my name involuntarily changed for me, illegally, in the form of a stolen identity incident perpetrated by my first wife (and her boyfriend) after we were divorced. The added bonus (or insult) was both of them forging a credit card application in my name and after getting the credit card, they went on a 5000 dollar shopping spree that was later charged to me.

@Bluefreedom: That sounds horrible! (I’m really embarrassed, but I don’t quite understand. Are you saying you had to change your name because of it?)

@La_chica_gomela. It’s a rather long and involved incident. I’ll send you a PM.

I have changed my name six times. My mom divorced and remarried three times before I was 5 y/o and each man adopted me, changing my last name. Then I changed my name when I got married, changed it back when I got divorced and changed it for the last time when I got remarried.

The marriage name changes were simple. I did the last one a year after we got married and it was still just a few minutes in the SS office.

I have never changed my first name because it is already a nickname of a longer name. I thought about changing the spelling in middle and high school, but it seemed silly in the long run.

Rowan MacBean isn’t the name my parents gave me. NONE of my family will call me by it. My parents actually sneer and/or mock when I get mail addressed to it. Everybody else calls me by it, though, and had no trouble switching.

@MacBean: GA! That’s really fascinating! Can I ask you a few more questions? So, it sounds like you changed your first AND last name? Is that right? So, how old were you when you changed it? Is it legally changed? Do the people you knew before (besides your family) ever get mixed up?

@Supacase I changed the spelling of my name, and tried to acquire a nickname in junior high… I was so sick of my plain (and very popular, at the time) name. Eh, in the end it was too much trouble, and I gave it up. Lisa I am, and Lisa I shall ever be.

Of course, I’ve been married twice, so my last name has changed. Both times I considered not changing it, but in the end I did.

God Given name is Reinhardt Steck. but when I registered in school for the first time my father said I could pick whatever name I wanted, and when I was young I was obsessed with ”Spencer for Hire” so I picked Spencer.
License and everything but my birth certificate say Spencer-Reinhardt

@La_chica_gomela: Yep, first and last name.

It took me a long time to pick “Rowan.” My given name didn’t feel right and was beginning to actually make me uncomfortable, and I decided if I was going to change it, I was only going to do it once, so I better find the right one. It took me about nine months to be sure Rowan was right. (Nine months. How symbolic!) That was November of 2007, which would’ve made me 23.

Sadly, “Rowan” did NOT go with my last name. It would’ve been one of those names along the same lines as Rose Bush and Robin Banks. I wasn’t especially attached to my parents’ last name, so I decided to change that, as well. “MacBean” was the fake last name I’d already been using for privacy reasons since I was first allowed to stalk the internet unsupervised at age 9. I picked that when I was a kid because my nickname was Bean and I was really interested in the Scottish part of my ancestry. So it’s very solidly a part of my identity already. Something that made me comfortable, and that other people were already familiar with.

It’s not legally changed yet because, while a name change isn’t very expensive, I have no source of income right now, and when I get one, I have some other things to pay for first. But it will be legally changed eventually. And, like I said, outside of my family, even the mailperson knows me by that name by now. Since I’ve been “Bean” forever, none of my friends who knew me before the change have any problem with remembering.

no, but facebook won’t let me use my real last name, so i use my middle name instead, and that throws a lot of people off.
i can’t count the times people have told me, “hey, that’s not your last name,” or “hey, is that really your last name?”

Twice, once for artistic reasons where I picked a nickname which I used on the radio and then on stage and consistently throughout my life, so people meeting me since then actually know me by that name and very few bothered with the previous one. People who knew me as a child vaguely remember what the previous one was and some still call me that, which is weird.

The second time was recently when I was on the run and my daughter’s life was in danger. I have two passports so I used the surname from my second passport and unofficially changed my first name. I even sang using that name, but changed my looks a bit and completely changed my repertoir, so nobody would make the connection unless they were a fan or something. We also didn’t use my face in posters anymore. Was much easier for her, because all I had to do was cut her hair and everybody thought she was a boy. Plan worked fine, except for my girlfriend who accidentally called me with my real name a few times and kept using her own real name all along, which was how they found us. I never knew they knew who she was.

I grew up being called Kathy; as a teen some friends started calling me Kat; professionally I use Katherine… and I’ve been introducing myself to new people as Katherine for a couple years now. So I answer to all the above. And since I work with hearing impaired and elderly people, I answer to other names, as well: Kathleen and Karen are the most common mistakes.

I did not change my last name when I married. My ex had a horrible childhoold, so there were too many negative associations with it, plus I’d had my name for 24 years and 2 college degrees. I offered to him that we both change our names to whatever we choose, to symbolize both of us leaving the pain of our pasts behind us, and starting a new life and family history together, but he was mired in tradition, and wasn’t happy that I refused to change mine.

If I were to ever remarry, it’s not likely that I’d change it, but I would give it thought and would make my decision based on many variables.

On my writings, articles, or on social websites – anything other than legal documents, I use a pseudonym. I’ve grown so attached to it that I may change my legal name to it.

That of course defeats the purpose of a pseudonym. So I don’t know. Leave me alone, I just woke up.

@Bluefreedom ; my sister, who works in a hospital and caught someone trying to get surgery under his girlfriends husbands insurance!!

I’ve only ever changed my surname when I got married. My hubby gets called Harry or ‘H’ even though his name is Mark (Harry is linked to his surname) It took me a while to get used to that! Especially now we have a dog called Harry!

My sister in law uses her middle name and all her friends and family use it apart from her dad and my hubby who insist on calling her by her ‘proper’ name!

@tiffyandthewall Why won’t FB let you use your last name?

At some point in college, I tried to get people to call me by my middle name…even people I just met wouldn’t call me it. It’s really a last name, and my actual last name is used a lot as a first name nowadays. So, that went out the window.

I legally changed my last name to add my husbands last name. I kept my maiden name and middle name…so I have a very long name, and it takes up a couple lines on my drivers license because the idiot didn’t just put my middle initial. So, technically I have two last names, and I can go by either when signing documents, since I have proof of both last names. I’m trying to sign my husbands last name more, but it’s difficult for me.

In 5th grade I DID change the spelling of my name form Judy to Judi, bit since my legal name was Judith, I figured I was fine just dropping the TH. The funny thing is that even though I am a few clicks away from 50, some of my older siblings still don’t spell it right!!

My husband grew up being called by his middle name, which his family still uses. When he joined the Navy, the military said he had to go by his first name, so he did. It is an unusual (for the US) first name, so it makes him easier to remember. Other than his siblings and their kids, no one even knows his middle name.

My kids are both adopted and since they were very little babies we easily changed their names with permission of the birth parents. All we had to do was put their new names on the placement papers and the legal process do the rest. My son already had an SS number so once the adoption was finalized and the new official birth certificate came, we went down to the SS office and changed it there. However, my son’s birth father’s family still call him Benjy, his original first name.

Several times. The name on my birth certificate is not the name I have used over the years. I’ve also taken on different last names, once when a teen and I took on my stepfather’s last name and then changed it again when I last got married.

After my divorce from my second husband, I changed my name back to the same last name as my children.

Ok so here is the story. I changed my name when I was 13. I always didn’t like my first or middle name and my last name didn’t match my visible ethnic origin (had an irish last name but i’m multi-racial). I’m currently 33. I left my hometown when I was 18, and everyone that i have met only know me by my new name. I have recently (March 2010) met and currently dating a woman whom I really care about, and I decided to tell her that I changed my name, but I don’t feel that it’s necessary to tell her what my name was (due to a personal promise i made to myself to never say my old name again). However, she keeps harping on it. She says it weird that I won’t tell her. That its wrong to keep secrets. The latest thing is that she think i’m not being truthful to her and that i’m holding something back. Currently, there is no one who knows me (that i interact with on a daily basis) outside of my family who know that I changed my name. She is the only one, and I feel that she’s making a big deal out of nothing. Am I missing something here? Am I minimizing the issue?

@iceweasel; not telling her seems kind of childish to me, but if this strange promise you made to yourself as a teenager still holds more relevance than your real time relationship, then hang on to it. Seem to me like the present is more important than the past.

She is probably imagining crazy scenarios that involve you being on the lamb from John Law, or your other name being listed on a no fly list.
Tell her, then ask her to drop it.