What's in a name

I changed my name in August, not my last name, but my first name.

I was a foreign to this country, born and raised in Vietnam. I came here when I was 10 years old. Naturally, I had a Vietnamese name. Because the name is long and hard to pronounce, I decided to go have an English name for social use. My parents baptized me as Elisabeth Vietnamese name, I decided to go with Elisabeth, with a slight spelling variation, Elyzabeth. The name stuck.

When I became a citizen, I thought I can change it legally to the preferred name. No such luck because I was under 18 when I became a citizen. As such, I became a citizen naturally through my parents. They didn't let me change my first name. I went on to use Elyzabeth on a social basis, but legally I still had my Vietnamese name.

Fast forward a few years when I graduated college and of the marrying age. Through personal preference, I knew I was not going to marry a Vietnamese man. I knew I wanted to change my last name to take that of my future husband's. However, I didn't really really care until I was proposed to. My fiance is white. He has a white last name. I plan on taking that white last name. It will clash with my Vietnamese name. So in August 2008, I finally got off my lazy butt and filled out the form to change my name legally. It was quite a process and I'll talk about it in more detail in a later post. But the one major misconception that I want to clarify: YOU CANNOT CHANGE YOUR FIRST NAME ALONG WITH YOUR CHANGE IN LAST NAME THROUGH MARRIAGE. So with that said, I had to go and change my first name first. I had to change everything along with it including social security, driver license, credit cards, etc. Now that I'm married, I have to go through it again, only this time, it wouldn't be as costly and will not take as much time to go through the court system.

I'm glad I made that decision to do so, because now the name flows much better. But talk about the lost of identity, within a few months, I had a completely new name, with only my maiden name as a reminder of who I was. Before it was:
First name, middle name, mother's maiden name, last name
I then changed it to:
Elyzabeth, mother's maiden name, last name
In marriage, I become:
Elyzabeth, maiden last name, new last name
I don't regret doing it because well I've always been known as Elyzabeth. It will just be a natural progression, so long as you commit to it and that you know you want to do this for yourself. I'm loving my new name.