The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Mine comes from my grandpa and first cousin. Since i lost both them, grandpa less than a month ago i was thinking of keeping Ilias as a middle name for them and for my parents who always tell me that i remind them of my cousin.

I am sorry.

Have you ever considered of changing your name because your previous was related to an older religion, inherited by your family?
Anyone who've done this? Was it difficult? Were there any other changes in your life which you'd like to discuss?

 
My name change wasn't religiously motivated, unless you count the need to purify myself of my bio-sire's influence in my life as religious. I was raised Buddhist by my mom, and my name had basically zero religious ties. I mean, Jacob is a name from the Bible, but it was my middle name (in the form of Jacoba, because that's better) because it was my mom's father's name. Charles ("Chuck") was my bio-sire's father's name, so Charly became my other middle name (and that one has no religious meaning so far as I know; from what I can see it comes from a Germanic word meaning "man"). But my first name was chosen because it was sort of connected to many of the women's names in the family. Family names, all the way down.  

I went through a legal name change last year to get rid of my bio-sire's last name and take on just my mother's, and to change around my first and middle names. There wasn't anything wrong with my given name, it just wasn't me, and by that point I'd been going by a different first name for 7ish years -- one that was much more me. So I changed my first name to the one I'd been going by, moved my original first name to a middle name, dropped one of the 2 original middle names I had, and added another one -- Ayla -- in honor of what my mom had wanted to name me before my bio-sire threw an  almighty fit.  

So I now have 3 middle names instead of my original 2, but my last name is no longer a hyphenated monstrosity that reminds me of all the crap my bio-sire put me through every time I look at it, so I think it evens out.

The name change itself was a relatively easy process, but changing all of my various forms of IDs and making sure the seventy billion gov't agencies that need my name know of the new one (because apparently none of them talk to each other)? That's a bit more difficult/involved/annoying as hell.

Most annoying is changing my name with MSP. Health care services and the driver's license/BC ID card are now somewhat integrated -- but not integrated enough that changing my name with one of them changes my name with both. So although I have my new name on my driver's license, I still have to jump through hoops so that next time I break a limb I'm not having to give my old name at the hospital every time.

Another thing that becomes kind of trying when going through this process is the sheer number of people who, upon hearing me say "I changed my name and need to make sure it's all updated here," immediately say "Oh! When did you get married?"

Because marriage is the only possible reason someone socially classed as female could want to change their name. The only. one.

Also, none of your business, gov't workers. None. of your. beeswax.

(And when I reply with "I didn't," they give me a look like I've grown a second head, and ask me then whyyyyy did I want to change my name? You don't need to understand! You just need to file my paperwork!)

(Side note, when I was a kid I found the Twelve Tasks of Asterix absolutely hilarious because of the bit where he had to fight the bureaucracy. I think even then I understood what my future held as a Canadian citizen.)

Have you ever considered of changing your name because your previous was related to an older religion, inherited by your family?
Anyone who've done this? Was it difficult? Were there any other changes in your life which you'd like to discuss?

 
I've changed my name a fair bit, but never legally.

These days, the majority of people know me by my pen name, Sam Flintlock, not my birth name.

And you have the myriad names I've used on Internet forums, each of which has had a different persona (sometimes more blatantly than others).  There's also those which have also found themselves used in meatspace; there's a whole contingent of people who still think of me as "Duck".

I've even had to end a name/persona after it all went a bit Ziggy Stardust.

And there's those names that are a bit embarrassing now.  "Sam Liberty" may have been who I was at 21, but it's a bit cringeworthy with the benefit of hindsight.  And it's probably better for my health that "Sam Speed" is no longer a name I'm known by.

Names can be useful tools in my view, but they're also as fluid as you want them to be.

Have you ever considered of changing your name because your previous was related to an older religion, inherited by your family?
Anyone who've done this? Was it difficult? Were there any other changes in your life which you'd like to discuss?

 
I haven't done it yet, but I have full intention of changing my middle & last name. The former because it's biblical and gender-specific.

The latter would be changed to fix my personality, the sources I trust indicate that it's a violent name that encourages me to be unfocused in my various projects. And, well, it's accurate to my blood relatives with that name.