Talk:Name change

Does anyone have any information regarding name changes that involve only one name — i.e., no "last name"? I'm trying to research the subject now, but I'm coming up short. For example, what happens if "John Doe" wants to change his name to "John"? - Korpios 17:09, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Reply

I was looking into this in Canada and I know that there is an Australian man who has just one name and has a hell of a time with institutions and what not in regards identification and yet in the end they seem to go out of their way to accommodate him. He has a blog on the internet somewhere in this regard. There is also one man in America with just one name. I know in Canada there are people with one name but only in cases of having been born with one name, usually they are coming somewhere from south east Asia where it is common to have just one name and upon receiving citizenship they have the option to keep their one name or add another. I personally wanted to change my name to just one name but was refused as they cited that that would just cause too much confusion. My argument was that Native Americans used to have only one name and that the imposition of the rule requiring a minimum of two names is a European tradition and that there is no practical reason why one should not have a singular name as there are already people with just one name wandering about as I mentioned above. They denied my request, appeal and ignored my multiple letters of appeal to the local politician who had jurisdiction over such matters. 187.146.130.76 (talk) 14:53, 28 December 2010 (UTC)God Dieux

Seems possible, see [1]. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 20:48, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your link is unfortunately dead

Tydoni (talk) 17:55, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

British name restrictions

Here's an interesting question: If you can't get a name like "Prince" in England, what happens if someone like Prince Rogers Nelson (a.k.a. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince) moves to England? Can he get a driver's license, for example? Or are you allowed to move to England with a name like that but just can't adopt such a name once already there?

I seriously doubt the British government would force you to change your name. It's a jurisdiction issue, national boundaries of law, stuff like that. You'd have to be extradited or something. VolatileChemical (talk) 07:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, there are no such restrictions in English law on what can be used as a name. So Prince wouldn't have any trouble at all.Llykstw (talk) 14:37, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Cost?

Kind of a dumb question but....... Does it cost money to change your name? If so how much?

That depends on where you are and the exact circumstance. I have heard of someone in New York State, USA saying that it cost her $175 to get a legal name change through a court of law. See the article and I just said that there is no additional fee when getting a legal name change with naturalization. Sign your posts on talk pages next time, please. Otherwise, others cannot easily identify your posts.--Jusjih 07:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I live in Wisconsin, myself: when I changed my name in 1994, the county courts usually charged $90 for filing the name-change papers. (Luckily, I got the fee waived when the court found me indigent.) I also had to run a legal notice in the local paper so that creditors could keep track of me; that cost $75, though the paper has probably raised its fee since then. ISNorden 23:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Name change common in other religions

The article should mention that assuming a religious name is common--although not mandatory--in some pagan faiths. (especially Wicca and Asatru). ISNorden 00:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Is formal process really required in USA?

The article states "There are differences in specific requirements among U.S. states, but usually a court order is needed to change names (which would be applied for in a state court)." I've read that under common law, people in many states are allowed to change their names without legal formalities; they just start using the new name. Can anyone supply a good citation to support support or refute the idea that a court order is usually needed? Also, this passage overlooks the very common situation of women changing their names when they marry, without a court order. Gerry Ashton 00:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Immigrants in the UK

Can immigrants in the UK (legal immigrants, that is) change their name under British law and keep their legal new name when they move to a different country or when they repatriate to their country of birth? Does a formal reason need to be given, or can anybody change their name for just personal reasons?

What did you do? 82.109.204.158 09:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC) me

Citing court cases

Some recent edits concerning a US constitutional right to common law name changes are difficult to understand for those who are not lawyers. If at all possible, these should be changed or supplemented with a link to an on-line copy of the decisions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gerry Ashton (talk • contribs) 22:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

Changing name for a company

I would like the article to include also something on this subject --YoavD 13:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge

Much of the content in legal name is better explained in this article, so I was tempted to redirect legal name to this article. But would it be better for the information to be on the broad-subject page than on the narrow-subject page? What do people think? —pfahlstrom 05:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge and redirect is a good idea--Riferimento 14:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but which should be redirected to which? I honestly don't know. —pfahlstrom 19:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

the information in Legal name is pretty much an extension of Name change. merge them together or expand Legal name. Merge name change into Legal Name, because a name change is changing of a legal name. Tydoni (talk) 22:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep them separate - I was researching what exactly constitutes legal name, and it had nothing to do with a name change (rather going by one's middle name).

Discussions of legal name and name change are significantly intertwined, but I think that continuing to expand legal name will grow the distinctions between the two topics sufficiently to justify keeping them separate. --SpeakKindly 04:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Support for merge, they are basically the same thing. andrewrox424 ^Bleep 12:27, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Strong support of merging. Rhythmnation2004 01:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Opposition to Merge:

I think this page is very useful as its own entity, and the value that it has would be completely lost if it were embedded in another page. I found this page by searching for "name change" because I wanted to find specific information about this particular legal issue. If this page did not exist, I probably would not have been able to find the information at all. I think leaving this page as it is and developing its information will provide a significant benefit to the population who uses Wikipedia. Please consider this before moving forward with a merge. -Gabriel Cross (maybe soon to be Gabriel Owen Cross)December 6, 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.79.70.138 (talk) 00:54, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. This article is fairly long, and there is pleanty of worthwhile material that could be added to make it longer. The "Legal name" article could focus on issues unrelated to name changes, such as, do legal names really exist? If so, how are they assigned? Can a person have more than one legal name at the same time? What is the effect of using a name that isn't a legal name, when there is no intent of changing the name (i.e. pseudonym, nickname). I think there is pleanty of material to support both articles, if they were both fleshed out. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Laws in Australia

I request info on name change laws and procedures in Australia, if anyone has it. 130.194.13.103 07:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Involuntary migratory name changes

Can someone add something to the United States section about how citizenship authorities at Ellis Island gave lots of immigrants new American names upon their arrival at port, without, you know, asking them? We've all seen it in the movies, I want to read something factual about it. VolatileChemical (talk) 07:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

the information I am reading states that that rarely happened at least at Elis island. It may have been changed by other clerks, teachers or by the person themselves. here is some info about it http://genealogy.about.com/od/ellis_island/a/name_change.htm http://www.genealogy.com/88_donna.html http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3893 Tydoni (talk) 01:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Quebec

Why is Quebec featured here? Is the author of that section under the impression that Quebec is anything more than a territory in Canada? It's hardly important enough to warrant its own section simply because Quebec is so culturally preserved that they refuse to allow anyone to do anything at all. I mean, we might as well go ahead and toss in sections for every other province, all the states in the US, Hawaii, Alaska, maybe a few shanty-towns in Africa. 64.253.217.148 (talk) 22:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

As the section states, Quebec has a different process for Name Change (Civil Law) than the rest of Canada (Common Law), thus through its uniqueness is notable. -M.Nelson (talk) 04:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Can we explain the process for the rest of Canada then? Tydoni (talk) 22:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Canada

added some info on the rest of Canada Tydoni (talk) 22:38, 22 March 2009 (UTC) the Canada section should be expanded Tydoni (talk) 01:20, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Awkward part

"Time can be of the essence. Most states require name changes to be registered with their department of motor vehicles within a certain time frame. For example, South Carolina[7], and Wyoming[8] require a name change be registered with their office in a mere ten days."

Above, "time can be of the essence" and "mere ten days" are awkward phrases for an encyclopedia article. Please correct. --72.68.192.132 (talk) 22:25, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Constitutional right in US?

I have long suspected that the claims in the article about common law name changes being a constitutional right in the US was exaggerated. Now that Google Scholar allows one to see many legal opinions, I was able to read Jech v. Burch and found that it did not support the following claims, which I have removed from the article:

• This at will right is guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment (Jech v. Burch 466 F.Supp. 714).

• The federal courts have overwhelmingly ruled that changing one's name at will, by common law, is clearly one's constitutional right.

What Jech v. Burch actually found was that there was a constitutional privacy right for parents to give their child any name they wished, and the state would have to have a reasonable public purpose to legislate otherwise. While the common-law right to change one's name at will was mentioned, no finding was made about whether it was a constitutional right. (Ordinarily states are free to pass legislation that overrides the common law.) --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Spelling and dates

Since the earliest version of this article only addressed the United States, US spelling should be used. Also, since the first full date was introduced in February 2004, and used the month, day, year format, that format should be used. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:40, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Overview with country-specific articles?

Should the Name change article be restructured to just provide an overview of the concept, with links to an article for each country or region where sufficient information can be found to create an article? Would the article be far too long if country-specific information were placed in the Name change article?