I’m a senior in high school and I’m planning on starting my freshman year in fall of 2016 and one thing I’ve been pondering for a long time now is a name change. I’ve never liked my name or felt it fit me (not to mention I’m not completely comfortable with the femininity of it for gender identification reasons). Even now my friends call me by my last name and several of my family members have agreed that I have an extremely plain name, especially for an artist. I’ve been hoping to change my middle name and say I just go by that (that way my family can still call me by my first). However, the legal process seems rather tedious and I’m not sure if I can get it changed anytime soon. So, would it be weird to show up to college and say “Hey there, roommates! Listen, I know the rosters say I’m insert name but I wan’t you to call me something completely unrelated!”
What should I do? Any help/advice will be appreciated, thank you!
This isn’t complicated. When you introduce yourself say “Hi, I’m ______ but I go by __” if you think people might be confused by your legal name/preferred name difference. If no one knows you by your “legal” name then introduce yourself as “Hi, I’m _.”
Many, perhaps most, people go by a nickname of some sort.
I’ve known people who go by a different name than their legal name. One person started using a new first name when he started graduate school. He introduced himself to everyone he met with that new name, and didn’t worry that it didn’t match his legal name. A few years later he changed his name legally to that name, but that was after he had tried it out for a few years and liked it.
Starting college is the perfect time for making this change. Especially if you have gender ID issues/questions, picking a name for your friends to use that will work whenever is a good step. The legal process varies from state to state. Nothing wrong with telling roomies and dorm mates what you go by. Check with college. I expect all will accommodate requests for class lists, etc., to reflect user name [within reason].
Happens all the time. Many students in my classes put “preferred name” “legal name” on their papers until I figure it out.
I go by my preferred name, which is a nickname for my real name, all the time. Class rosters and university emails refer to me as my preferred name.
Changing how your name appears on transcripts and things is hard, but having friends and teachers call you something else is easy. Also, don’t know how your school handles email but at brown, the standard is firstnamelastname@brown.edu but you could set up aliases that went to the same inbox. For example I went by a nickname instead of my first name and got the email alias nicknamelastname@brown.edu so that people would be able to email me easily. Be sure to look into this in the future.