How to Change Your Name At Work
Ladies, what are your thoughts on how to change your name at work? If you changed your last name when you got married — or switched to a new name for any other reason, such as divorce — how did you let coworkers and other colleagues know? What did you do about your social media profiles?
(And, if you already had a professional identity and then took your partner's name, do you keep your maiden name on LinkedIn and Facebook even if you don't use it?)
Over at CorporetteMoms today, we're sharing multiple stories regarding deciding on baby's last name, so we thought it was a good opportunity to share some tips on how to change your name at work.
First, here are a couple of quick stats from several we shared in the CorporetteMoms post: Only 6% of U.S.-born, married women have “nonconventional surnames” — meaning they kept their name, hyphenated, or use two names, but about 20% of recently-married women have kept their surnames. In the post, you'll also be able to read some thoughts from the CorporetteMoms writers (Kat, Kate & April), as well as one of Kat's BFFs who really wanted her kids to have her last name.
Psst: Here on the blog, we've talked about hyphenated names and email addresses, getting called the wrong name at work (and being assumed to be a certain gender because of your gender-neutral name), choosing whether to change your name when you get married, post-divorce name changes, using last names at work, and how to get rid of an old nickname.
How to Change Your Name at Work
Here are some tips on how to change your name at work:
1. Send a brief mass email to coworkers and other professional contacts to tell them your new name and new email address. Make sure you're sending it from your new address (or at least that your new address is the reply-to). Note whether your old email address will forward to your new one. If the forwarding will continue indefinitely, and you make the recipients aware of that, they may never feel obligated to change your details in their contacts and may just keep using your old email (and maybe, name) forever — so perhaps it's best to be vague… Note: Before you get married, ask your IT department how much notice you'll need to give to get a new email address and set up forwarding.
2. Change your email signature. Everyone should be familiar with the format “Firstname (Oldlastname) Newlastname,” at least for marriage name changes, and you should keep your signature looking like that for at least
3. Change your outgoing voice mail message and the recorded name you made for the phone directory. Check that your name is updated in any internal listings, too, such as as the company intranet.
4. Get a new business card and door/cubicle nameplate. Depending on the size of your company, it may take a while to get these changes made, so again, make sure to find out ahead of time how much lead time they need.
5. Update your LinkedIn profile and other social media accounts. For example, when you click to edit your LinkedIn profile, for example, you can click on “Add former name.” If you add your original last name, your profile will now read “Firstname (Oldlastname) Newlastname.” You can choose to have your name appear this way to (1) your connections, (2) your network (people up to three degrees away from you), or (3) all LinkedIn members. You should also change the URL for your LinkedIn profile.
6. Notify professional organizations and licensing boards. Tell other groups you belong to, as well, such as nonprofit boards, local committees, networking groups, alumni associations, and so on.
Don't forget to fill out a new W4, etc., and make sure HR makes all the necessary changes on their end, too!
If you've changed your name because of marriage or any other reason, how did you tell colleagues? If you changed your name when you got married but worried about losing the professional reputation and identity you'd built with your old name, have you continued to use it in work-related settings?
Stock photo via Deposit Photos / miflippo.
I spoke up during a meeting and reminded everyone my name change had happened. I got laughed at, but oh well.
Okay… this is timely. I’m one of the posters who has mentioned recently that I’m getting a divorce. My family knows, and I’m slowly telling friends… but how do I start to tell people at work? I’m still wearing my ring (at work only) to avoid unwanted questions, but that’s probably not the best tactic. I’m in the running for a new job, so I guess I’m hoping that I get it and can start sort of fresh at the new job with my old name, even though the divorce won’t be final for another few months?
Ugh. Thanks in advance for any anecdotes or reassurances. I feel so lost these days.
Aw, hugs. When I was in your shoes I kept telling myself “this time next year things will be much better,” and darned if I wasn’t right. I promise things will get better.
I would tell the office gossip, and let them spread the news. I think if you stop wearing your ring people will also figure it out (and it would be so tacky to say anything to you, although I suppose some people may).
I don’t notice whether or not people wear their wedding rings, and if someone stopped, I would probably assume it was in the shop for repair, or it no longer fit, or they had developed an allergy or something.
My tactic would be to tell my best friend in the office and ask them to help slowly spread the word, telling others that you don’t want to talk about it (or if you wanted to talk about it, that you want to…)
I don’t wear a ring ever and have been happily married for 10 years… fwiw my husband also often forgets (although is a smidge better at remembering than I am), and my male engineer co-workers rarely wear their rings (we travel a lot together and I’ve never seen them be anything but respectful towards their partners, even in their absences). I had one jerky clerk who had been through SEVERAL wives (and even insisted that the woman he married in his 60s change her name) ask me how I know I’m married if I didn’t change my name and didn’t wear a ring… I just told him that I didn’t have amnesia and remembered I was married, even without those reminders (and laughed to myself because…really!?!).
This. I went to the office gossip and I was like, “You know everything and everyone around here. I would like to use your powers to get this news around so that I don’t have to tell people, because it’s super upsetting. Can you just work this into conversation whenever it seems appropriate/my name comes up?” She was happy to help out.
This is amazing! Love it!
FWIW, I had a transgender woman recently start with her new name, and we told people that she will now be going by “xx.” We also told people that we knew there would be mistakes at times, but the right etitiquete was to move on and not act like the world had ended. We compared it to a last name change for a marriage “you wouldn’t (necessarily) feel the need to apologize profusely, you would apologize and move on.” It was great guidance. I could see this being useful in the divorce situation, just keep it moving. Good luck frirend.
I’ve done this twice (changed it, then changed it back years later) and both times it was awkward for a short while and then everybody including me got on with our lives and it was fine.
This last time I waited to “go live” at work with the change until my new name plates for desk and door were ready.
I’m getting married in a few months, and… I just don’t want to change my name. Frankly, I am very creeped out by the pressure to erase my identity. Some of it is that I’m in my mid/late 30s, with a professional reputation that precedes me, and I moved a thousand miles away from home (to a small city in a very red state) for fiance’s job.
People at work know I am getting married, and my main goal is to handle post-honeymoon questions about the lack of name change.
I didn’t change my name and it has just never been a problem. Don’t worry about it!
Just say “I didn’t change my name.” And if they ask why, say “Because it’s my name. How ’bout them Gators?” Just don’t engage. They’ll get tired of it eventually.
I just said “because I didn’t want to” and “he’s fine with it” if someone had the gall to follow up asking how my husband felt about it. But usually they didn’t.
“Oh, he decided not to change his either.”
Definitely do what you’re comfortable with (I didn’t change mine for the first 8 years of marriage, in a very red state, and I can’t remember a single time that it was an issue). But please, don’t think that changing your name would erase your identity. Your identity is much stronger than that.
I am a semi-professional writer, so actually….
(And I know you mean well, but please don’t tell me how to feel about myu identity. It’s icky.)
OK, sorry for telling you how to feel. But when you claim that something would erase a person’s identity, that’s a pretty offensive idea to people who did it. You can write or do anything else professionally under any name you want.
I don’t think she was telling you how to feel, but rather stating a fact that discussing changing your name does not necessarily mean anyone is trying to pressure you into erasing your identity. And it’s also pretty “icky” to imply that anyone who did change their name is in any way erasing their identity.
I didn’t change my name. When people pushed, I said that my husband wasn’t changing his name, either, and changed the subject. Most people haven’t cared one way or another.
Has anyone changed their last name legally but NOT at work? I recently got married and planned on changing my name, but would prefer to keep the same login/email/etc for recognition purposes as long as I’m at the same company.
Kinda? It was important to me to go by my new name because I like it so much more than my old name, but I only started my job a couple months before I got married, so while I changed my email signature, display name, LinkedIn, etc., I did not bother to change my (many) usernames or email address because it didn’t seem worth it to tell everybody I’d only just met a few months before to start emailing me at a new address, or to make IT redo all of my credentials they had just set up a few months (or weeks!) before. Not sure how much that matches up with your actual question.
If you are a lawyer, generally you can’t do this – you’re obligated to practice under your legal name (at least in the states where I have practiced).
Thank god for that! I am a NY attorney, and would have got into a lot of trouble. I was discussing with my Alan, who is no my ex, how I would change my name if we were to get MARRIED, or he change his name, and we got into alot of fights over whether I would use his name (Sheketovits) or keep mine (Barshevsky), or BOTH, and then we argued over whether it was going to be Sheketovits-Barshevsky (what HE wanted) or Barshevsky-Sheketovits (which was what I wanted). My dad and Grandma Leyeh did NOT want any part of his name to sully the Barshevsky name, but it all became a mute point b/c we split up. I can NOT say I was sad about breakup b/c who knows what kind of trouble our kids would have gotten into having to put that name down on all of their books, tests and personal materials. FOOEY!
If you’d like to keep your name unchanged for work, just don’t change your name so that your legal name is unchanged. You can use your name socially – introduce yourself using your new name, sign cards, etc – and the only time you have to use your legal name is filling out forms.
Basically, you can call yourself whatever you like. It doesn’t have to be your legal name.
I changed my name legally, but didn’t change it at work. For some reason, it was really complicated at work to change it for taxes, insurance, etc but keep my email and display name with my maiden name, so I just didn’t change it at all. I get my W-2 and insurance cards with my maiden name still, but honestly it has never been an issue. That’s all based on your SSN anyway which is the same. I figure if I move companies I will just start fresh with the new name, but for now it was easy just to keep it as it was.
I work with both lawyers and accountants. One day, my colleague and I realized that none of the married female lawyers changed their last name when they got married. But all of the married female accountants did. We thought it was a female lawyer thing to keep your maiden name….(we’re in Toronto, Canada)
Lol it might be, only 1 law girlfriend changed her name when she married…. I was actually SHOCKED at the #s above and that keeping your own name is considered non-conventional. My given name is not common… often mispronounced… and I hated it growing up… but somewhere along the road to adulthood, it became intrinsically part of me and I would never dream of changing it and made the clear pretty early on to every guy I dated (so they could hit the road if that was an issue). Ended up marrying a guy whose mom (also a lawyer) hadn’t changed her name, so it was a total non-issue to him (as it should be). I live in a liberal state and am mostly around liberal people, and I think anyone that would have a problem with it just assumes my name is my married name… and whatevs to them.