In June, I kicked off a change of my last name from Adam Jackson to Adam Chandler. I held back at the opportunity of changing my middle name to something like “danger” and kept my given first and middle name that Mom and Dad gave me as a child. Changing my last name was probably already pretty upsetting to both of them without putting salt on the wound with changing my given name. I’ve toyed with the idea but I’m not against the name Adam. I just don’t think it’s what I would have chosen for myself. It’s not too late to one day make a change.
The point of this post is that I’ve been a Chandler for nearly 5 months and it’s been a lot of work to get things changed. The people I interact with took up the change suddenly and without push-back which I appreciate. I sent an email to my closest work colleagues and to people in my life who deserve that 1:1 email explaining the change. The content of the email was pre-written but it’s good to reach out. I still haven’t reached out to my biological Dad about the change. I’m sure he cares and would like to hear from me but he has his own life and family and place in the world and I have mine. I don’t know what we’d talk about once we got through the standard life updates. I don’t think he’s surprised of the name change or that I didn’t clear it with him first. I think my Mom knows about the name change but we don’t talk much so she hasn’t asked me about it. I don’ think we’ve spoken since earlier this year.
The legal stuff was really easy although expensive and time consuming. I had spend $200 for a new passport and a new driver license and spend a lot of time printing out stuff for IRS and mailing copies so everyone knows I’ going as a new name now and it’s legally changed. Getting new bank cards was a bit of effort as well. My bank mailed me a new debit card 3 times, each time with a new number but each time with my old name. The bank staff at my local branch were perplexed but eventually, a card with Adam Chandler arrived.
Social network changes continue to be a daily effort. I log into a website, see “Jackson” or see my old email address and take a minute to update the information. I think Amazon is still sending me packages to my old last name and the post office is a bit irked with me because I informed them of my name change (over the phone since for some reason my local postmaster has my cell number – it’s a small town) and whenever a company mails me a letter with my old last name, she writes a big question mark on it which is a bit silly but oh well.
Most of the issues I see with name changing goes back to my question, “Doesn’t anyone get married and take their spouse’s last name?” It seems like people change their last name at least once in their lifetime yet our social networks and post office don’t really work with us through the process. Reddit and dozens of other social networks straight up says we can’t change your username. I guess that’s partly my fault for using my first and last name everywhere online because I strictly believe in transparency online. Hiding behind fake names will cause humans to assume their actions aren’t linked to their honor as a human. I chose to be AdamJackson online and now networks say I can’t go as AdamChandler. A little annoying. While I still own the Adam-Jackson.net domain, I’ve started using AdamChandler.me full-time on everything. If you email either domain, the mailbox is still a single entity (the joy of owning your own web server instance) but I have a lot of photos on Flickr and out on the web with a watermark that contains my old URL. Looks like I’ll need to renew Adam-Jackson.net indefinitely.
One of my own issues with the name change is that I’ve had to force myself to change my signature every week or two that I actually have to sign something. Apple Pay (NFC) and a digital signature stored on my Mac in Preview means I don’t sign things very often. It’s rare but signing Chandler instead of Jackson has taken some getting used to. ON top of that, I often give my last name as Jackson. I called to make a reservation and they asked for my full name and I said Jackson. It’s not a legally binding thing so I don’t stop myself and make them re-write my name but I’m slowly getting better as identifying as Chandler.
I’ll enter the new year as a Chandler and I just hope filing taxes isn’t a huge pain.