Some guy in the States changed his name to None Of The Above, and entered an election without any campaigning. Got some votes too ^_^

It's way harder than it should be in general. In Pennsylvania, a couple of my friends got married and they wanted to change both their names to a new family name together. It was a huge, expensive, convoluted process. And basically was impossible without involving lawyers and multiple court visits, psychiatric evaluation. He changed his name through the process, then they married and she just did a checkbox and changed hers (you know, because that's how shit works in this horrible system).

I work for a university, and, fortunately, we've implemented a name of preference system where anyone can specify any name they want as their preferred given name, and it hits all university systems where it can. Sadly, some systems are not allowed to respect it (HR, actual name on degree) without legal paperwork, but it makes everyone's lives a lot easier to have it in place within this community.

Anyone can pick a "cool" online bastard lunatic name. That's one of the steps that comes with accepting your legal name :P.

Yours seems to deal poison damage, which is also cool... depending on your enemy type.

And what about an ancient Tibetan symbol that got copied over without any copyright infringement claims? It's silly, if you think about it, how people tie a swath of things to a simple harmless symbol and how it then becomes a bringer of bad memories. Its ancient symbolism is positive, after all.

Just say he was a big fan of Charlie Chaplin.

A guy in the US changed his name to Optimus Prime

Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol/squiggle, and had to be announced as 'The artist formerly known as Prince'. That guy was out there.

Digital (/online) administration should make it easy nowadays. I don't understand (agree with) why people should have to motivate their decision.

On the other hand... I can't think of a reason why I would do it (whatever my first/family name would be).
Really? He changed his 'official' name to Squiggle Nelson?

You're telling me Winter Snowfall is not your legal name? :-P

Yeah, my damage is restricted to enemies with high INT. Most orcs are rather immune. You probably know the problem. Foes with no concept of "Cold Logic" are hard to hit...

OnTopic:

To specialties of the German system:

Here you can have an artists name, with will be on your ID and passport. But you can't have it "just like that", you have to prove that published to or performed in front of a noticeable audience. Never tried it, so I don't know the amount of paperwork or fees involved. I guess, in Germany, at least a lot of paperwork...

Also, when you marry, you have three options concerning your last names, but there is one rule: One of the spouses' names becomes the Family Name. The name will be passed on to any children.

One changes it to the spouse's. The traditional way, although it's fine if a man takes the wife's last name. Jane Foo marries Joe Bar and becomes Jane Bar. Simple. Children are Peter, Paul and Mary Bar.

Each one keeps their name. Jane stays Foo, Joe stays Bar, but if Bar is selected as Family Name the children are still Peter, Paul and Mary Bar.

One keeps their name, the other changes, but keeps the old name additionally. Still the one keeping their name is the Family Name. So Jane stays Foo, Joe is now Foo-Bar, the children are all Foos.

Sadly, in Germany it's not possible to have both parents (and children) take on double names. No family of Foo-Bars. AFAIK most of our neighbours aren't that finicky, and some people marry in Switzerland or Denmark just because of that (when you marry abroad, the foreign rules apply, iirc).

Well, in my case, I have a first name so common as to be contained in texts as old as 6000~ years old. I have given serious consideration to give myself a little unique flair rather than being a name so damned common that I could shout it in a restaurant and have a statistical probability of matching to 10.

So hypothetically, if I became the next Ringo, Paul, John, or Freddie, I could in your country, give myself an absurd name and it'd stick, because I was famous.

Funny I notice this topic, there is a story on the bbc today about people changing their name from Alexa and challenging Amazon to change it due to bullying over the name.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57680173

I can neither confirm nor deny. Rumors of me being a natural phenomenon are however gravely exaggerated! :P

A very fair point. Your life has the potential to become somewhat complicated if at the very mention of your name all manner of slumbering "AI"s come to life.

No need to be famous. You just have too prove you played some gigs or released some CD as Darvond Mushroomcloud, and you can have it in your ID and/or passport. It's additional to your birth name - not replacing it. It's even free, except for the fees for getting a new ID/passport.

Up next: People having beef with Apple after naming their daughters Ciri...

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