Legally Changing Your First Name

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How would legally changing your first name willfully accomplish something uncharitable?
 
I’m not sure about that. Is there ever a moral obligation to assist law enforcement in your own arrest? Genuine question: I’m actually not sure what the Catechism or Church teaching says on this and I’m too lazy to search at the moment.
 
lwest said:
How would legally changing your first name willfully accomplish something uncharitable?
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Petitions to change name must be approved and others can object. A person could be trying to hide or match name with a celebrity or commit fraud.
 
Socrates92 said:
I’m not sure about that. Is there ever a moral obligation to assist law enforcement in your own arrest? Genuine question: I’m actually not sure what the Catechism or Church teaching says on this and I’m too lazy to search at the moment.
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I don’t know if you are obliged to assist, but then there are surely limits to the extent.you are allowed to deliberately hinder them as well.
 
It reminds me of my grandmother. At her birth their parents had intended to give her a first name and a middle name. The municipal employee registering it made a mistake, and put the to names together in a compound first name. So, when they discovered that, my great-grandparents, out of respect for “les autorités de la République”, dutifully complied and called her by the compound first name which wasn’t what they had chosen.
 
Given that the name change is a public record, that tends to backfire . . .

And what about the boy named “Sue”?
🤔:crazy_face:
RolandThompsonGunner said:
I would think you’d just need to keep a record of your legal name change to show that the person who was baptized or married was actually you.
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In the US, it’s a court order, so . . .

sidenote: if someone consistently uses a name, it does end up legally being their name–however, it iwn’t practical, as there’s no way to demonstrate this, and you can’t get identification to match . . .
aroosi said:
so unless they named you Adolf or Lemon,
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bringing us back to “Sue” . . .
🤣
whatistrue said:
Then you have those who were saddled by their parents with names that were selected for “uniqueness” or “to stick it to the Man, man” and now want to put that behind them.
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Years ago, I saw an article about Mr. Dah naming his son “Zip”, with the middle name of “Ippitydoo” . . . he deliberately left a not-too-odd first and last when the middle wasn’t included.
LilyM said:
As an adult I bit the bullet and changed my name by deed poll to avoid awkward explanations which were needed when showing documents with two.different names.
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The DMV told my wife that she could renew her license by mail, and she happily did so.

Eventually, the bank pointed out that her license was marked as not valid for federal ID . . .

While I was teasing her about her “illegal alien license”, she found that she had to get a certified copy of our marriage license from over a quarter decade before in another state, as her social security card and birth certificate had different last names . . .
 
If I changed my first name, I’d just make my middle name part of my first name, and my name would be exactly the same. Not a sin, so far as I know.
 
Sooooo many Catholics have changed their names. From witness protection to Irish discrimination to persecution, to religious orders, to they just want to. A person is baptized not a group of letters.
 
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t change your name if you’re unhappy with it, but please consider a fireproof lockbox for all pertinent documents. I can imagine that it is possible to be excluded from an inheritance if another survivor decided to be a stinker and you had no proof of your original name.

All of my pictures and family legal and church records, on both sides of my family, back to the late 1880s, were in a large brief case that was apparently stolen when I moved. I, too, ran into name change issues regarding getting a driver license. While I was at it, I attempted to replace all missing church records.

I learned that someone wrote Tip for the county of my marriage. Genealogy records indicate, wrongly, that I was married in Tipton County, which is totally incorrect, as I was married in Tippecanoe County, but, so far, I’ve been unable to correct that entirely false narrative. :roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

The church secretary found that my marriage records show that I was baptized at Church A parish, but no First Communion record was noted. However, my parents weren’t near that city when I was baptized, and I know that I received my First Communion there in 1948.

The stolen mementoes included a rectory wedding photo of my parents and the priest, plus write-ups from three newspapers. The date and the parish name were even engraved upon my parents’ double tombstone by my father, yet, the church shows no record of their marriage. My parents would be devastated to know that, but both are deceased, so are spared that worry.

Bottom Line: Keep your original records and the record of the change. You don’t know what’s coming down the pike.
 
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