Name Droppers : If You Don’t Like Yours, Change It--This Is Prime Season

The young woman rose, lifted her hand and swore to tell the truth, so help her God.

“Natasha’s always been my favorite name,” she told Superior Court Commissioner Julee Robinson.

OK, but why does she want to change her last name to Lavery, Robinson wanted to know?.

“Duke and Anna Lavery on ‘General Hospital,’ ” is all the woman said, as if it needed no further explanation.

The woman smiled. Robinson grinned. Courtroom spectators, including many who also soon would be known by different names, chuckled.

“So ordered,” the commissioner said, simultaneously killing off another unsatisfactory name (Patricia Leanne Watanabe) and giving birth to a new one (Natasha Lavery).

For reasons not altogether clear, we have entered what appears to be Orange County’s prime name-changing season.

Every year in Department 3 of Orange County Superior Court, about 500 unhappily or unsuitably named people ask to be officially renamed.

During spring and summer, name changes reach their peak. It’s anyone’s guess why. Officials say that people may have more time to show up for court proceedings.

Whatever the reasons, motives can be rather straightforward.

For example, Michael Scott Vail petitioned the court this year to add the name Merritt between his middle and last names “to qualify as an heir” under the will of his grandfather, Hewlitt C. Merritt.

Sometimes the reasons are heart-rending.

A Santa Ana woman asked to change the last name of her children, ages 8 and 11, to that of their stepfather. Her reason: “They never see their real father, who is serving a 100-year prison sentence.”

If you don’t like your name, you should change it, advises Leonard Ashley, English professor at Brooklyn College and past president of the 1,000-member American Name Society, a group of linguists, literary historians, and others fascinated with the etymology, origin and meaning of names.

“Your name is part of your identity,” Ashley said. “You know how annoyed you get when somebody forgets it or misspells it. We even tip head waiters to remember it.

“As a person grows up, he might not like the script that has been selected for him. He may not want to be a Desmond. There are these reputations that . . . go with the names.

“If you’re running for the vice presidency, you don’t want to be a Bambi.”

Tiffany Kristine Kern can relate to that. On Tuesday, she will become Djuna Renee Woods.

“I’ve always hated Tiffany since I was little,” she said. “It’s sweet, frilly. It’s charming, nice, pleasing. I’m trying to get away from that.

“I’m not a Tiffany at all . . . it just seems like daddy’s little girl. It’s also a trendy name right now. . . . I don’t know any other Djuna.”

Kern appropriated her new names from her favorite female authors, Djuna Barnes and Renee Vivien. “I’m an English major,” explained the UC Irvine senior. Her new last name--Woods--simply sounded good.

“Both my parents will be sad,” she conceded. “They spent a lot of time picking out my name.

“I liked the idea of being able to name myself. It’s really empowering. I’m in the process of self-discovery. I’m 24. . . . My father, I haven’t told him yet . . . I thought I’d send him the (legal ad) clipping” publicizing the court hearing.

“I’m trying to be a strong feminist and intelligent, self-sufficient,” she said. “Now I just have to get used to calling myself Djuna.”

In some cases, fathers thought they were bestowing the ultimate honor.

“But obviously, it’s tough to be a ‘Junior,’ ” Ashley said. “First of all, you don’t have a full individuality. And you have a father to live down or up to. Both of these are difficult.”

Moreover, while “about 4% of the United States population is a ‘Junior,’ 10% of the population of insane asylums and jails are ‘Juniors,’ ” Ashley said, quoting from studies conducted in the 1970s.

“If you’re a John F. Kennedy Jr., you can have a great advantage. But at the same time, people are going to say to you: ‘You’re no Jack Kennedy.’ ”

The sure-fire solution to being badly named, according to Ashley, is simply to change it.

“You can call yourself anything you want as long as it is not an attempt at fraud,” he said. “So you can’t call yourself Donald Trump and go into the real estate business.”

Although it is commonplace and quite legal to change a name simply by using a new one, many still seek the official imprimatur of court.

Not everyone gets his wish.

Last year, Garden Grove City Councilman Robert F. Dinsen wanted to change his name to Robert Frank Taxfighter Bob Dinsen but was turned down after a voter protested. A Superior Court judge agreed that Dinsen’s name change was an attempt to undermine a city ordinance saying, in effect, that “taxfighter” is not a permissible ballot designation under the state Elections Code.

In Orange County, it requires very little to change your name.

Once you fill out the forms, you file them in Superior Court where the woman in charge of name changes is Charlotte Hooker, who, by the way, has no desire to change her name.

“We see a lot of Asians on behalf of their children about the time they start to school,” Hooker said of families who are Americanizing their names. “I’m sure it makes it easier for the kids to fit in.”

Once the forms are filed and notice has been published in local newspaper legal ads, would-be name changers go before Commissioner Robinson.

“Most . . . appear without attorneys,” said Robinson, who has been changing other peoples’ names for three years.

“In some states, you have to have a good reason to change your name,” she said, adding that in California there must only be a good reason to prevent a name change.

The law requires a notification of a parent if the other parent wishes to change a child’s name. This allows protests at the hearing.

And you can find help without hiring an attorney.

Tired of spelling “V-e-n-k-a-t-a-r-a-m-a-n S-u-b-r-a-m-p-a-n-i-a-m over the phone?” ask the publishers of Nolo Press, a Berkeley firm that bills itself as the largest self-help publisher of its kind.

For $14.95, you can buy Nolo Press’ soft-cover book on “How to Change Your Name,” a 120-page, do-it-yourself legal guide, first published in 1974 and in its fourth edition.

People ask Robin Hood of Laguna Beach if he changed his name.

“I think everyone wants to change his name as a kid, especially if you are Robin Hood and everyone wants to know where Friar Tuck is, and Maid Marian,” said the 43-year-old chef’s instructor at Orange Coast College.

But Hood said he has been the Sherwood Forest hero’s namesake since birth and wouldn’t think of changing it now.

He acknowledges, however, that his mother and father are mum on which one selected the moniker.

Some of Lynne Marie Dean’s friends laugh at her new name.

Dean, 24, of Orange, works as a movie extra and aspires to perform “genuine acting where I’m myself and my roles are who I am--real feeling and sensitive.”

She needed a good stage name. She decided to become “She-Rah Lee.”

“It’s a spiritual name that I’m using,” she explained. “I found She-Lah in the Bible . . . It didn’t fit. My friend said: ‘What about She-Rah?’ The ‘Lee’ came from another friend.”

“My mother hates it,” Dean conceded. “It’s like it’s demeaning or an insult . . . but I didn’t mean it that way. The person who was brought into the world is not the same person I am now. I’m not that little girl anymore.”

Sometime after settling on her new name, Dean learned there was a comic strip character named She-Rah. No matter that her friends laugh, she decided. “My mom and my aunt still call me Lynn. That’s fine. But to the world, I’ll be She-Rah.”

The Name Society’s Ashley feels a person is entitled to say, “ ‘This is my name and this is how I want it spelled,’ and your friends should go along with that.”

Interestingly, Ashley has never been keen on his own name.

“I don’t like it. My official name is Leonard R.N. Ashley. I have lots of middle initials. They name you after all your dead relatives and worse, after all the living relatives who can leave you money. By the way, it doesn’t work. My relatives didn’t know how to live or when to die. So don’t saddle your kid with a lot of names.

“All my friends call me Tim. I’m certainly glad I didn’t grow up like a Leonard. Leonards are accountants and fussy. And, of course, Lenny is really stupid. He’s the big nerd (in John Steinbeck’s) ‘Of Mice and Men.’ ”

Ashley declines to take his own advice and change his name. “I have this great sense of family,” he said, noting that his male ancestors have been Anthonys and Leonards for generations. “I don’t have a son, but I guess I would have to call him Anthony or Leonard.

“It’s kind of hard to give up your roots.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Isabelle C. Benson b ecame Belle Star

After a divorce, Star, who lives in Laguna Beach, didn’t want to use her maiden name of Caestecker, which she found “too complicated.”

Linda Ann Meierhoefer b ecame Linda Ann Meyers

Her children had finished high school and it had been 10 years since her divorce, so for this Costa Mesa woman the time seemed right. Besides, she told the court, “there are now two other Mrs. Meierhoefers.”

Alexander J. Reyes became Sir James Bond

This Westminster man had been known by the same name for all of his 34 years when he appeared in Orange County Superior Court in 1982 to change it for “personal reasons.”

Sunita became Sunita Kumar

This India-born Costa Mesa woman had no last name to change. “There’s no necessity to have a last name or a middle name (in India),” she said. “But over here I have problems. That’s why I did that.” She added her husband’s last name.

Andrew Sterna became Andrew Zaborowski became Andrew Sterna

When he immigrated as a child, this Polish-born El Toro man changed his last name to his stepfather’s. At the age of 37, Zaborowski wants to change his name back to Sterna, his natural father’s. “Family sentiment, I would say,” he explained. “My stepfather’s name meant nothing. . . . Why should I make the other name famous?”