Blackfish64 Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 On Name ChangeDad was a carousing, woman-beating drunkie. He changed his family name before I was born for reasons sort-of known and understood by me. To make a long story short, when I and my older sister were born, he had intended to change his name back to his original family name, so he found it useful to place his original family name to our names and birth certificates, omitting entirely his legal name. So, legally speaking, our last names were different from Dad's.Time passed and Dad never changed his name back and we had always gone by his legal name. I never saw my birth certificate until I was sixteen years old, when my sister was about to go on her senior trip to the Bahamas and was denied a passport because the name she went by was different than the name on her birth certificate. It was either go with the name on the birth certificate to get the passport, or legally change the name to the name she was going by. Mom had clean forgotten about all this through the years and was furious. She wanted all our names to be the same, and he often feuded with Dad's side of the family, so naturally, out of spite and jealousy, she wanted our names to be, legally, NOT Dad's family name. Sister agreed with Mom and wanted to go to court and get her name changed legally to the name she had been going by all of her life, and to keep separated by name from Dad's side of the family. I, on the other hand, had no such desire. I was happy to have found I had the same name as my beloved grandfather, who was always especially nice to me, and I wanted to go the other way and change my name -- to my real, family name! Again, Mom stepped in, flipped out over my thinking on the matter, and forbid it. I was a minor child and had no say in the matter, and she would be damned if I would take that dreadful family name. I was dragged into court and my name was legally changed on the same day as Sister's. Now, I have always wanted to change my name back to the blood family name. At the time I was ready to do it, I was living in Nevada, and the laws in Clark County for name change are just a pain. So, I didn't bother with that, but I did change my name online from my legal name to my original blood family name. As an author and social media user, I simply changed my name in fantasy, to see how it would feel on me. I like it. And I wanted to move to a state with easier laws for name change and finally get the job done. But, now, on the other hand, I have been using the name for a long time as a pen name, and could, instead of changing my legal name, simply go by my original blood family name as a nom de plume.The more I think about this particular problem, the more I see a lot of advantages any way I look at it.What do you think?What would you do if you were in my shoes?
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