Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Hey, that's also relevant to me! I've checked my local laws, and where I live, your legal name is the one you consistently present yourself as. If you're Joe Frank Smith, and you go by Frank everywhere, that's your legal name.

I've gotten so tired of having this argument. Inevitably some clerk will insist on calling me by my first name, "you know, your legal name". No. My middle name is my legal name. It's what my mom, sisters, wife, friends, teachers, coworkers, doctors, and everyone else call me. My first name is an aka at best, except the only people who insist on using it are ones wrong about the law, so I'm not even really "known as" it.

I once closed a bank account 10 minutes after opening it because they insisted that my debit card be printed as "Joe Smith", not "Frank Smith". I told them I'd absolutely refuse to touch it because that's not my name. I find it interesting that it's mostly local orgs who are a pain in the neck about being wrong about this. You'd think a small local bank would know local law better than a huge multi-national, but the giant bank I opened a business account with was totally fine putting Frank Smith on my accounts. Go figure.

(Somewhat related: That's made me super sympathetic to trans people who want to be known as something other than what's written on their birth certificate. Yeah, I get it. It's nails on a chalkboard when someone calls me Joe, so if you don't want people calling you Tammy anymore, I'm on your side.)

This is technically the law in California, too (and possibly that’s where you live) but in practice the ability to do common law name-change has been abolished at a bureaucratic level.

Since at some point everything official now routes back to either a passport, an immigration/naturalization document, a court-issued name change doc, or a marriage certificate, those are effectively the only ways your name can be changed.

The problem is that all the law can do is make it legal for you to use whatever without it being considered fraudulent to try. But if your law is like CA’s it doesn’t specify other institutions other than possibly state government ones have to honor that and, in particular, it can’t constrain the federal government at all.

So that leaves the DMV as the one possibly effective way to do common law change, on the off chance somewhere will just accept your license as proof of identity. But now that driver’s licenses are subordinate to passport info or equivalent via Real ID, that route is pretty much toast too.

You might still be able to get the alternative state-only DL / state ID with a common law name, and maybe open a bank account with that, but then the credit reporting companies (or Chexsystems) don’t have to honor it so you’re possibly screwed anyway. Plus without a Real ID you’ll have to show a passport to fly domestically, and that will have the name you don’t like.

And, of course, none of this helps with your paycheck because you can’t satisfy an I-9 with a DL. It requires a federal document, too, which—if your state info doesn’t match your federal info—needs to be a fully identifying federal passport/equivalent. So even if you get the bank account with your chosen name, you might run into issues with your checks being to a different one.

At this point, it’s just not worth trying common law name change anymore. You either flip a few hundred for the official change or you accept the fact that you’ll have a public name and a private name.

(And I say this as a “Geo” who strongly dislikes seeing “George Jr” on stuff so I feel your pain. I just tell my employers that my given name only goes on paychecks, benefits, and tax forms, and is to never be used publicly. That has always worked.)

That's what I do, too. If you have to put Joe on the paperwork, fine, but call me Frank.

Sweden has a sensible solution to this (im sure others do too). When you register a name you specify which part is the tilltalsnamn (lit. name of adress). In your case, the names would be disambiguated as Joe Frank Smith and Joe Frank Smith.

Not all systems use that piece of information, but most do.

Yes. I'm Swedish and American TSA/airport security not understanding this is why I mentioned it.

But how are all those people supposed to know that beforehand? Call yourself whatever you want but don't expect anyone to deal with your name-fuckery. It's called first name for a reason.

Curious, if you don't like it why not change it?

Then you can be Frank Smith all the time.

It’s an old family name. I’m the 8th one to have that first name. My kid’s the 9th. I’m proud to have the name, but it’s not what I go by.

Re banks: My bank refused to update my name on my accounts after I authenticated with my card, showed them my passport, name change form and deed poll, as, and I quote, "anyone could have done that". Like yes, I believe that's the point of a deed poll? And what more evidence did they want to prove it was me trying to change the details on my own account?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com