Best time to get a permanent name change?

[InquilineKea]

I am thinking about getting a permanent name change sometime in the near future. But I don't know if it's a bad idea to get it right before applying (I've heard that it's a very tedious process), and it may also look somewhat suspicious, as if i have something to hide. On the other hand, I would prefer to get it before I get too many publications.

[Immuno]

I am in the exact same predicament. I got married several years ago, and just now decided that I wanted to take his last name. I'm not sure if doing that NOW would be a bad idea.

Hopefully someone will respond to this thread.

[maeby-me]

I am in the exact same predicament. I got married several years ago, and just now decided that I wanted to take his last name. I'm not sure if doing that NOW would be a bad idea.

Hopefully someone will respond to this thread.

Same thing here, except we picked a new last name, but never got around to changing it. Hopefully someone has some good insight!

[neuropsychosocial]

I would highly recommend changing your name before entering graduate school, if possible. You'll still need to provide all names that you've ever been known by on your application, and your transcripts will remain under your old name, so it won't look like you're trying to hide anything. You're about to meet a substantial number of people who don't currently know you: if you apply under your current name, they'll have to learn both your old and new names, and depending on whether you're changing your first or last name, you may need to frequently correct people or explain your name change. If you do it now, everyone will know only your new name and it will be a lot easier/less annoying in future. I speak from experience.

(If you're a woman changing your last name after marriage, this probably doesn't apply as much, because people are used to that. If you're changing your first name or changing your last name for reasons other than marriage, you'll have a lot of correcting/explaining to do, and in my case, the explanation was somewhat painful [never met the man who gave me my birth last name; legally adopted my mother's last name after her death] and it was distracting - and made me a little sad - every time that I had to tell the story.)

[hahahut]

How about changing one's name for identifying her/his publications from other people with the same names? I have been thinking this for a while. My name is a very popular one (both family name and given name). So popular that if you yell it on a busy street, more than ten people would ask "me?". I have seen how Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search confuse authors with the same name. Will this be a real problem after a few years in graduate school? If so, is it possible to publish under a weird pseudonym or is it better to change name officially (most likely just family name)?

[InquilineKea]

^Ah yes, I'm in the exact same predicament. What's worse is that I've just discovered that A LOT of people simply google in last name + title of paper (or field of study).

==

Thanks for the responses so far, everyone!

Edited May 12, 2011 by InquilineKea

[hahahut]

In Microsoft Academic Search, one author with the same name as mine had thousands publications! But it turned out the search just attributed the publications of all other people with the same name to him. Yes, I think the family name is what matters. But it is not really a very good thing to do at least in my culture.

[InquilineKea]

But it turned out the search just attributed the publications of all other people with the same name to him

Wow, that's horrible. Yeah, my name is SO common that it's impossible to give me an h-index. Or to search for anything that comes from me (I can easily find my own stuff, but most people are nowhere as tech-adept as i am, and probably won't put quotation marks around the name or put in special google search terms). What culture do you belong to?

I'm Chinese, and the limited number of Chinese lastnames is going to become a HUGE issue soon (ESPECIALLY as China's prominence in academia rises). A name change might disappoint one of my parents, but *really*, there is really no "proper" way to change a chinese name to an english one (there are multiple ways to do it), so if they REALLY care *that* much about it, I can just change it to a form similar to the Pinyin form but not totally identical. The romanization of the name really shouldn't matter if they care about their own name.

That being said, my mom told me not to change it to anything "too weird" and also told me that it should still be chinese because people are going to think I'm weird if they see an American name and see an Asian face instead.

==

Wow, this just came up in Nature: http://www.nature.co...ll/473124a.html

Such diligence can also benefit scientists as members of a professional community. Researchers who make sure that personal and institutional websites, blogs and social-media pages are accurate and honest will enhance the usefulness of web searches by pushing the most relevant and trusted information to the top. This can make it easier for scientists to find one another for collaboration and reviewing papers, and to locate and fill jobs.Enhancing visibility and promoting a digital image may strike some as unsavoury, but it is not. Researchers are right to promote themselves and their work in a reasonable capacity. The Internet has provided a tremendous tool to do this effectively. And a little more besides.

Edited May 12, 2011 by InquilineKea

[UnlikelyGrad]

That being said, my mom told me not to change it to anything "too weird" and also told me that it should still be chinese because people are going to think I'm weird if they see an American name and see an Asian face instead.

Well, that depends. If you live in America, it's very common to see Asians with totally American names. One of the profs in my department is Asian (by birth, not Asian-American), but both her first and last names sound American. (Yes, she married an American.) My mom is Asian-American (both of her parents came over from China). She's one of the many many Asian Americans with an English first name and Chinese middle name, and for the last 48 years she's had my dad's very English last name as well. Most people don't see her middle name ever, but I haven't seen people surprised by her appearance for at least 20 years...

Here in America, there are so so so many people from different cultures, and so much intermarriage as well, that it's common to see someone who looks mostly American but has an Asian last name or vice versa. My mom's family is from Hawaii, where diversity started happening about 100 years earlier than the rest of the nation, so I have cousins who are 1/4 Hawaiian, 1/2 Chinese, 1/4 Japanese...1/2 Chinese, 1/2 Indian (not native American)...and much more! We are an interesting crew!

[runonsentence]

One idea for people with common names: I use my middle initial, to help differentiate me from duplicate names floating around out there.

I also did some work to standardize how my name appears on profiles/pages linked to my name on the Web (i.e., my online teaching dossier, my Twitter account, my CV/profile on my department site, etc.) and created a Google profile. This can at least help keep things organized if someone were to simply Google your name after reading your pub.

[psycholinguist]

Well, that depends. If you live in America, it's very common to see Asians with totally American names. One of the profs in my department is Asian (by birth, not Asian-American), but both her first and last names sound American. (Yes, she married an American.) My mom is Asian-American (both of her parents came over from China). She's one of the many many Asian Americans with an English first name and Chinese middle name, and for the last 48 years she's had my dad's very English last name as well. Most people don't see her middle name ever, but I haven't seen people surprised by her appearance for at least 20 years...

Here in America, there are so so so many people from different cultures, and so much intermarriage as well, that it's common to see someone who looks mostly American but has an Asian last name or vice versa. My mom's family is from Hawaii, where diversity started happening about 100 years earlier than the rest of the nation, so I have cousins who are 1/4 Hawaiian, 1/2 Chinese, 1/4 Japanese...1/2 Chinese, 1/2 Indian (not native American)...and much more! We are an interesting crew!

This! My family name makes me sound as if genealogically speaking I must be half [nationality] thanks to my father. As it happens, I am half [nationality], but it's because of my mother, and [nation] has absolutely nothing to do with how they met!

[InquilineKea]

Hey, does anyone know if you could ask the academic journals for a "retroactive name change" after you get the name change? As in, to ask them to change your name as it appears on the list of authors that's printed online?

Wow, I just found http://iammarkzuckerberg.com/ and it's sort of sad.

==

And wow, just wow

The less-famous Zuckerberg would get hundreds of friend request and inquiries from people who thought he was one of the company’s co-founders. “I’ve gotten emails from people on Facebook, thanking me for finding their lost relatives because of Facebook,” he said. “And then they would say, ‘Can you lend me some money so I can go fly and meet them?’”

Plus, he gets "a dozen phone calls a day from people complaining about Facebook and demanding tech support." Nice deal for Facebook: They make it impossible for people to reach them, and some random Midwestern dude gets the fallout.

Edited May 28, 2011 by InquilineKea

[runonsentence]

Hey, does anyone know if you could ask the academic journals for a "retroactive name change" after you get the name change? As in, to ask them to change your name as it appears on the list of authors that's printed online?

Having worked for a big academic journal press in a past lifetime: if the journal is both print and online, chances are slim (online and print need to be consistent).