Crafting your personal brand during a name change

What’s in a name? If you’ve never changed your name, got married or divorced, used a nickname or shortened name, or been called by your middle name, you’ve probably never given your name a lot of thought. It’s just always been that way and while you might not have picked it, you’re accustomed to it, and it suits you pretty well. Names are a powerful part of who we are, and changing your name to something you’ve chosen for any reason, affirms your identity – an important statement in the world of personal branding and online interactions. Yet the process of changing your name can be long and arduous.

Software engineering manager and public speaker, Daelynn Moyer, changed her name with 17 years of work history behind her, and while the initial legal paperwork was straightforward, the process was more complicated when it came to personal branding. She shares some of the highs and lows of the experience, plus some tips that might help others who want to do the same.

Where do you start?

Changing your name legally is a fairly simple process, but the aftermath can be more complicated. Moyer explains, “I wish I had known that it would be a never-ending process. You dive into it and you start realizing how many places you need to connect with to change your name, especially if you’ve changed it legally but even if you’ve changed it socially.”

In the context of being transgender, it’s also not a simple decision. Moyer says, “While the social methodology often presents transition as an event, it is rarely that. Very few people have the privilege of dropping out of society for a few weeks and re-emerging from the chrysalis as this new person. Just because of logistics, expense, and complexities, most people go through about a year-long process of changing their gender. It was no different and for me, I think I had changed my gender presentation quite a bit and had been living in a different gender presentation for at least 2/3 years before I decided to change my name.”

Moyer also adds that choosing a new name is not a trivial process and many people spend months on a short list before trying out a few different names for a while and then settling on one. The legal process would follow after a name has been tried and tested, so from this point of view it is also more complicated than it may initially seem.

What are the roadblocks?

Moyer explains that there were two categories of barriers she faced when changing her name to Daelynn. Organizational/bureaucratic barriers and cultural barriers, both with a distinct set of challenges.

Bureaucratic barriers

The usa.gov website alone lists 10 places you’ll need to contact to change your name once you’ve organized the legal name change. In reality, Moyer says that’s just a drop in the bucket. “Even when you think you’ve changed everything, you haven’t. It’s an ongoing game of whack-a-mole.” Each place that you need to inform of your name change has a unique process for handling and processing that, some more tedious than others.

Within the workplace, Moyer found the same issue with different systems required to do her job. “For example, my employer’s HR management system had no option to add a preferred name, and they had a policy in place that the name in the system had to be your legal name.” There was no established protocol for changing your name outside of marriage, no list of all the places that the name needed to be changed, and each system: Jira, Confluence, email, Slack, plus payroll, pensions, and healthcare needed to be updated in the way that the particular system demanded it.

As for personal branding, Moyer shared that many social media platforms have policies against using a non-legal name, “That becomes a pretty major issue pretty quickly if you were trying to change your name – especially in the context of gender change where it’s not just a question of something like ‘I prefer to be called Bob instead of Robert.’” This becomes an even greater issue if you’re somebody who engages in public speaking or piece work – as people might cut you a check in the name they know you as, and when you get to the bank, they won’t cash it.

Cultural barriers

The biggest cultural barrier is perhaps insensitivity, and this isn’t just an issue for the trans community. Many people do not want to be reminded of a name change for all sorts of reasons. It can be awkward, embarrassing, or even traumatic when people use your former name.

Moyer admits to having concerns about encountering resistance in the workplace, “I was already known as someone who was pushing the boundaries of gender in that way, so I wasn’t so concerned that I’d bump up against ‘Oh this person is trans’ but it did concern me that it might give an excuse to those who are resistant, a reason to, and a vehicle for misgendering me intentionally.” For the most part, her fears, though not unfounded, were scarier than the reality she experienced.

What resources are there?

The internet is packed with resources for changing your name, from the official usa.gov website to blogs and news articles to organizations like transequality.org and Transgendermap. Moyer also mentions well-developed guides that can be found in a basic search with tips on changing your name in social media platforms that are resistant to name changes, answering questions like, “What is the best way to go about changing your name?” or “What are the magic words that you have to say to the customer support person to get them to say yes?”

Allies: There are usually people willing to help, so find them and ask. In Moyer’s case, the IT Systems Manager at her workplace proved to be a valuable ally, “Since she was the manager of IT she was able to touch most of the systems that we used, so even though we didn’t have an established name change protocol in place or an established checklist she was able to flip a lot of the switches that were otherwise hidden for me. In the systems where it didn’t need to be bound by my legal name…It took a strong ally who understood those systems to be able to make that as smooth a transition as possible.”

People who have done it before: When you’re the first person doing something, it’s always challenging because there’s no roadmap to follow. If no one at your company has ever changed their name outside of marriage then it’s unlikely there are any protocols and checklists in place for that, but if someone has done it before then hopefully those that follow will experience less discovery and a more straightforward path.

Friends and family: While they may not be able to act from a practical point of view, getting your peers on board and having emotional support is also a huge bonus when it comes to tackling anything challenging.

Moyer recommends a spreadsheet that you can check every so often to stay on top of all the admin that comes with a name change — be warned if you legally change your name, the spreadsheet is likely to triple in size! She also shares that you’ll be using it for some time. “It’s been 5 years since I legally changed my name and I’m still receiving mail in my old name.”

Leveraging your online presence

Say you’ve been using LinkedIn for years, you have a great network that you’ve worked hard to build and followers who find your content insightful and interesting. Now you want to change your name and/or gender. How will they take it? Will you lose connections? Will you get hate? Do you have to make a public statement? It’s not always as simple as filling in a few boxes and being done with it.

“I was concerned that as I started changing my name, using more trans-centric hashtags, things like that, that I would begin to attract the attention of online bullies, that I could get doxed, that I could get harassed, that sort of thing — and to some degree, my catastrophizing was misplaced.”

Everyone’s experience is different, however, and it very much depends on the network you have curated for yourself, and your reach. If you have 100K followers then you’re going to come up against more comments from all sides which means more hate, too. If you haven’t carefully selected your network, and have missed that there are bigots hiding within it (no matter how insightful they may be on other topics) then you may be opening yourself up for more criticism.

Another issue is people not knowing who you are. LinkedIn doesn’t send an automatic notification to your contacts when you change your name, so if you don’t make some kind of announcement, you risk people not knowing who you are.

Moyers sums up the conundrum well, “Do I make an announcement about this? Because if I don’t I’m going to start showing up in people’s feeds and they’re going to say ‘Who the heck is this person?’ At the same time, how do you feel about outing yourself? How do you feel about having that in your post-history? For some people, the sacrifice is worth it, and they start a new profile, for others that investment is too rich to abandon, and the cost is too high. Some people have much stronger feelings about being identifiable as transgender than others. I don’t care that people know I’m transgender, but that’s not a universal experience.”

Set yourself up for success

So, what can you do to ensure that your personal brand remains strong, but also an accurate reflection of your identity during a name change? Moyer shares a few key tips to make the process smoother:

Embrace the change

While you may not want your name and gender to be the focus of your personal brand, it is an inherent part of who you are and people ultimately connect with people, even if you want them to focus on your insights into effective IT systems. In Moyer’s words, “The most powerful thing that people can do is to embrace that they are making this change and not try to hide it. Make it a branding opportunity rather than an inconvenience because it’s through that, that your network can begin to see you as a more complete and authentic person.”

Curate vulnerability

Moyer explains that in her experience, people respond really well to authenticity and curated vulnerability. “There is a lot of value, from a personal branding perspective, to make really conscious choices about being vulnerable online and doing it with the intention of sharing your authenticity. I can engage in curated vulnerability by talking about a difficult conversation that my wife and I had yesterday and maybe some of the hard learning that I took away from that conversation, but not talking about the historical trauma that lead to us being in that situation, or why I made some bad choices in the relationship that led to the conversation. It’s about making vulnerability and authenticity part of your brand without trauma dumping and without oversharing.”

The workplace is changing, and many employers have now embraced the idea that people don’t necessarily use their legal name. Moyer believes that this is “One of those situations where we begin to recognize that accommodation for exception ultimately benefits everybody.” If James prefers to be called Jim, not because of a gender identity issue but just because that’s who he is, then Moyer explains, “It is inconvenient, uncomfortable and dissonant to be confronted with a name that is nothing more than legality.”

On a broader note, Moyer believes that many people beyond the transgender community could benefit from giving themselves permission to re-invent themselves. “So many people feel stuck in how they are, and I don’t think it occurs to cisgender people in the way that it does to transgender people that you get to choose those things. 90% of your identity is malleable and flexible and elastic and if you don’t like something about yourself, whether it’s your name or, the way that you present in public, you’re not stuck with it. I think that everybody deserves the opportunity every few years to check in and say, ‘Am I being who I want to be in the world?’ And if not taking the opportunity to change that.”

So, if a name change is something you’ve been thinking about, check out the information on how to go about it, surround yourself with the right people and resources, add a good dose of courage, and go for it. The results may just surprise you.

Photo: Welcome to the Jungle

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