Changing your name twice, is it just me?

[Cowboi]

After 10+ years of going by the name Setheriane Aden and having had my name legally changed I've found that I'm not completely happy with it. I'm curious how many other people have feelings that perhaps they chose the wrong name or chose one for the wrong reasons and later wished they'd chosen something else.

At this point I would not consider changing my first name again as I have been using it for so long, and honestly, you can only expect other people to GET IT so many times and I think once was hard enough for the people in my life lol. I have considered changing my middle name though to reflect the name I wish I had chosen and would have chosen had it even crossed my mind. I want to change it to Oliver. Neither Seth nor Aden were chosen for any particular reason, no great meaning behind either that I felt a connection to and neither were names I was in love with in the past when I began considering new names. They are simply the ones that kind of fell into place for me.

Oliver is a name I never even considered, it never even passed through my list of options at the time I began seeking out a male name. I've also recently learned that Oliver is a family name, which we were unaware of. My father has been really big lately into the family tree and tracking down our roots so we only learned in the last month that this is a family name. My mother also told me that she wishes she had named me Olivia at birth, which is of course the female version of Oliver.

I was curious if this happened to anyone else. Do you often hear other names you hadn't even considered and think to yourself, "Maybe I should have chosen that instead." Has anyone changed their name or a portion of it a second time for any reason other than marriage and if so how difficult was it to do legally?

Like I said I'm interested in only changing my middle name, my first name has been used for too long and it just isn't even worth the hassle of attempting to change it. Seth has kind of become a part of me now despite not really caring one way or the other in the past when I chose it and I'm happy with it at this point, but I don't feel any kind of attachment to my middle name at all.

I really wish my family had talks like this with me in the past and had helped me choose my name, but I was only 15 at the time I began living as male and they weren't ready or able to deal with the fact that it may be permanent and not just a phase *sigh*.

[Rayalisse]

I was curious if this happened to anyone else. Do you often hear other names you hadn't even considered and think to yourself, "Maybe I should have chosen that instead." Has anyone changed their name or a portion of it a second time for any reason other than marriage and if so how difficult was it to do legally?

Like I said I'm interested in only changing my middle name, my first name has been used for too long and it just isn't even worth the hassle of attempting to change it.

Someone I worked with legally changed her name 3 or 4 times within the space of about two years  (dramatic changes - None of her names were even close to the first one, or each other.  She even changed her surname which caused some confusion when delivering mail addressed to one person but the name change hadn't circulated through the department yet...)

Apparently she got really good at it!  Once she finally settled on a name she's stuck with it for the last 8 years so I guess she finally found the one name that felt right.  I remember when she kept changing it that it was hard to know how to refer to her.   So, like Prince -  until she settled on a stable name for herself, we wound up calling her "the woman formerly known as {Beatrice}".  She apologized to the office for the confusion after she found the name she preferred and told us she was 99% certain she wouldn't be changing it again...  since then we called her by her chosen name.

As far as how difficult to legally change your name -- at least in California, processing a name change is pretty quick and painless.

[Colleen Ireland]

I better get it right the first time... I'm a dual citizen.     American by birth, Canadian by circumstance....

[Cowboi]

I think I'm just going to go ahead and do it. Where I live it's pretty easy to change your name legally and it's cheap if you do it yourself. I still have the old documents and can just revise the dates and names in it, then it costs about $60 to file the paperwork to get a court date set. You have to run an ad in the local paper for like one week, which I can do in a small town paper (even though I live in Omaha I'm actually from Papillion and register my car there, it's a suburb but they still believe they are a tiny town lol) for another $60, then I pay for copies of the paperwork at about $2 per copy from the courts.

I plan to file bankruptcy next February though so I'm going to see if I can get it done before then to avoid any belief in court that it's due to the bankruptcy and credit stuff.

So hopefully in a couple of months my name will be Setheriane Oliver instead of Setheriane Aden

[Nigella]

My name change is still my legal name but my mum, dad and a friend said they liked the shortened version so that kind of stuck. At work I'm known by my full name but with family, friends and new people I'm usually introduced with my shortened version and I actually prefer it. So I guess because it sounds different from my legal name as its the second half of it its a kind of second choice. I wouldn't of thought of it in the beginning but I prefer it and I think it suits me better. I prefer not to say the legal or shortened name in a public forum.

Stardust

[K8]

I've thought about changing my middle name even though I changed it when I changed my first name, but changing my name was such a hassle I don't want to bother.  Changing the name legally was simple; changing it with everyone with whom I do business was the hassle.

I really like being Katherine/Kate, but if I didn't I would have to really hate it to bother changing it.  It took my friends and family a while to call me Kate consistently.  I don't think I'd want to put them through that again.

- Kate

[Cowboi]

I really like being Katherine/Kate, but if I didn't I would have to really hate it to bother changing it.  It took my friends and family a while to call me Kate consistently.  I don't think I'd want to put them through that again.

I hear you, that's why I'm just going to change my middle name instead of my first name. I'd prefer for my name to be Oliver but it's so much simpler to just change my middle name and not put everyone through it again. I can still get people to call me Oli even if it is my middle name lol. I like the name Seth, but Oli would be a nice nickname

[Hermione01]

I hear you, that's why I'm just going to change my middle name instead of my first name. I'd prefer for my name to be Oliver but it's so much simpler to just change my middle name and not put everyone through it again. I can still get people to call me Oli even if it is my middle name lol. I like the name Seth, but Oli would be a nice nickname

Actually, that would be a good way to go about it.  Many people use their middle name and you can introduce yourself to new people with Oli and say it is your preferred name.

[Aeden N]

I recently changed my name, in June, from an extremely "feminine" name that I shortened to just the first initial, and in haste I kept it as my legal first name and made Aeden my middle name. This is something i truly regret, I love my middle name and always introduce myself as such, but it's only been two months and it's costly to change it where I live. I thought I was alone in wanting to change it again. I'm hoping by the time I have the cash to do it again I'll also be able to change the gender marker to male as well, making everything final and true on paper and legally.

[~Carmen]

I went by my girly sounding middle name at the beginning of my transition, but it bothered me because it was a male name, then I changed it to Carmen after my aunt

[Gemini]

I started out going by Kelsey a year ago (Kelsey was a pet squirrel my sister and I had when we were kids, lol), but I've changed my name twice since then. I guess for some people it take some time to find a name that you identify with and are really comfortable with.