When a surname stops feeling like home

For a long time, Hannah lived with two surnames, which is a neat bureaucratic way of saying that family life had already split into separate parts. On social media, in sports rosters, in email and for restaurant bookings, she used Leonard, her mother’s surname. Legally, and also at work and school, she still carried the surname she had inherited from her father.

Her parents divorced when she was a toddler, and she says she has not had much of a relationship with her father since. She last saw him seven years ago and does not know where he lives now. Last month, the 25-year-old in California finally changed her surname to Leonard-Ripley, removing the reminder of her father and combining her mother’s maiden name with her husband’s surname. Years of hesitation ended only when marriage gave her the push she needed. The price tag helped, too, in the depressing way that public life often does: the change took around three months and cost hundreds of dollars, including a $400 filing fee and another $130 for newspaper advertisements she called outdated and odd.

Her story sits beside a far more famous one. In April, Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt and Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt, the adopted children of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, filed documents in California to remove Pitt from their surnames. Zahara was 21 and Maddox 24. In June and July, they completed the required public notice in a local paper for four weeks, and both are due in court in September, when a judge will decide whether the change is approved. Another of Jolie and Pitt’s six children, Shiloh, changed her surname to Jolie in 2024. The family drama has been public for years, which is exactly the sort of thing surnames are supposed to outlive and instead end up reflecting.

Jolie met Pitt on the set of Mr and Mrs Smith in 2005, married him in 2014 and filed for divorce in 2016 after an incident on board a private plane. In 2020, she told Vogue that she had left Pitt for the wellbeing of her family. A source close to Pitt told BBC News that he regretted how things had unfolded with his family and was heartbroken, while also respecting his children’s decisions. That is about as graceful as these situations get.

Not every surname change comes with celebrity coverage or a court date. Hannah says she had no emotional connection to her previous surname, and that using two surnames in different settings often confused people. Maggie, from Lincolnshire, told BBC News something similar, though her case was harsher. She inherited a surname from her father that included a profanity, was teased for it at school and says she hated it. Her parents split up when she was a child, and while she is not estranged from him, she says they were never close. Changing to her mother’s surname felt like a relief, she says, and now she feels more like herself.

That reaction is not mysterious. Dr Harry Parkin of the University of Chester, who studies the history of names, says surnames are closely tied to identity and that changing them can signal a wish to disconnect and disassociate. Dr Becca Bland, a family counsellor and coach who specialises in estrangement, says people who are distant from a relative may use a name change as a psychological defence, a way of separating themselves from something painful or traumatic. Dr Lucy Blake of the University of the West of England says estrangement can bring grief, loss and also freedom, and that it is often a far more considered decision than critics like to imagine.

The law, naturally, is less interested in feeling than in forms. In England and Wales, a surname can be changed by deed poll, either unenrolled or through the High Court for £53.05. In Northern Ireland, the options are deed poll or recording the change in the presence of a legal representative, at a cost of £35. In Scotland, the application goes to the National Records of Scotland and costs £40. If you are under 16 in England, Wales and Scotland, parental consent is required. After that, the state mainly wants to be informed, along with the Passport Office, DVLA, the Student Loans Company, banks and your GP.

For Hannah, the process in California took about three months and cost several hundred dollars. For Pitt’s children, it means a judge will soon decide whether the legal paper trail catches up with the family they already seem to have chosen. And for everyone else, the lesson is rather plain: surnames can look permanent until the person carrying them decides they are not.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com