I’m seriously considering a name change, both first and last name. But I thought about it and I don’t want to deal with the massive paperwork issues, especially when it comes to citizenship papers and fact that I got citizenship status derived from my mother’s naturalization. I’m not sure if a name change would cause troubles.
Should I do it just for spite?
For a little while I kinda split the difference. Early in my tech news writing career, I started pronouncing my last name as the French version.
I fenced in high school and we did well enough to go to a national competition, so they brought in fancy refs from France. For the first time in my suburban upbringing I heard an actual French person pronounce my last name over the auditorium speakers and it was the coolest frigign thing I’d ever heard.
So once I started doing interviews and getting on podcasts in the early days of my writing career, I pronounced my last name that way to try and distance myself from my family without going through a legal hullabaloo.
I eventually I realized it was a bit disingenuous since I hadn’t spent the time to learn anything about my French heritage, which I was already quite removed from anyway. I dropped it and went back to what was surely the Ellis Island pronunciation I grew up with.