Meaningful Rename / Real Life

• In some societies (the Cherokee, for instance), a person is given a name when they're born, then receives a new name upon being recognized as an adult. Often the new name reflects some aspect of their personality or social role. In pre-modern/non-Western societies with very high infant and child mortality, this custom may have originated because many babies would not live to become functioning members of society.
• In ancient China, men adopted style names upon reaching adulthood, and emperors were referred to by their ruling era, with a new name granted posthumously. Indeed, it was socially taboo for somebody to call somebody else of the same generation by their birth name.
• In pre-Meiji Japan, it was common to give a baby a short, easy-to-remember, and auspicious name that would be used throughout childhood and then to create a full-length adult name when the person came of age. Childhood names were customarily written with a single kanji while adult names used two or more. It was common for an older family member or a social superior to honor the person coming of age by "gifting" them a kanji from their own adult name to incorporate. A person might be renamed more than once in their lifetime, in honor of major events like inheriting a title or taking Buddhist monastic vows. The custom began among the nobility and the warrior classes (the first to adopt true surnames in place of patronymics or epithets) and eventually spread to the merchant and peasant classes as well.
• During the Japanese colonial periods in Taiwan and Korea, Taiwanese and Koreans were 'advised' to change their names from the original Chinese and Korean style to Japanese, which many proceeded to do, in part to avoid potential discrimination against those with native names.
• People who convert to a new religion sometimes change names to reflect their new faith. This seems to be particularly prevalent with Western converts to Islam. Famous examples include boxing legend Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay), American football player/sportscaster Ahmad Rashād (Robert Moore), basketball players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (Chris Jackson), singer/songwriter Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), or in an earlier century, General Abdallah Menou (Jacques Menou de Boussay). Nation of Islam members often replace their surname with an X as a rejection of their "slave name" before taking on an Arabic name (most notably Malcolm X, who was born Malcolm Little). Islam does not require this^note Generally speaking, although it is encouraged if your pre-conversion name is problematic for Muslim theology or would cause confusion; e.g. a convert from Hinduism named Krishna might want to change his name to avoid honoring a Hindu god (who from a Muslim perspective is a false god), and a convert from Christianity named Christian might want to change his name to avoid confusing people unnecessarily. On the other hand, there's no principled reason in Islam to require someone with a name outside these categories to change their names; if someone named Edward (an Old English name meaning "rich protector") or Maria (a Biblical name of a woman celebrated in Islam, albeit not as the Mother of God) or Theodore (a Greek name meaning "given by God") or Indira (a Sanskrit name meaning "beauty" or "splendor") wanted to keep their name after converting, that should be fine. Indeed, several non-Arabic, non-Biblical pre-Muslim names have become quite popular as "Islamic" names (most notably Rostam, a pre-Muslim Persian hero whose name was adopted by Arabic-speakers; it's particularly popular in Egypt, though Egyptians usually pronounce it "Rostom"). and the choice is supposed to be voluntary (although some were duped or misled into believing otherwise): Dave Chappelle has been a Muslim since 1998, but did not change his name and while Sinéad O'Connor changed her name to Shuhada Sadaqat after converting to Islam in 2018, she continued to use her birth name as her stage name until her death in 2023.
• Jewish converts to other religions: 19th-century German theologian Johann August Wilhelm Neander (Greek for "new man") used to be David Mendel before he was baptized. German poet Heinrich Heine used to be Harry Heine before he converted to Christianity. Some Jewish converts retain the meaning of their name, but translate it to other language. Baruch Spinoza became Benedictus Spinoza after baptism. Both names mean "blessed" - Baruch in Hebrew and Benedictus in Latin.
• It's customary for Jewish children to get a ceremonial Hebrew name at birth, in addition to their common name. Thus, people who convert to Judaism as adults must give themselves a Hebrew name, though it's not so much Meaningful Rename as Meaningful Additional Name, or perhaps True Rename.
• Subud, a "spiritual movement" that started in Indonesia in the 1920s and gained a following in America in The '60s, advises its members to change their first names if they feel it doesn't reflect their inner self. This was really just a carryover from Indonesian culture, where people will sometimes change their name following an illness or misfortune, to signify a new beginning. Notable Subud members who did this were Byrds leader Roger McGuinn (formerly Jim McGuinn), comedian/writer/singer/voice actor Lorenzo Music (originally Jerry Music) and actor/musician Hamilton Camp (previously Bob Camp).
• Western and Central European princesses who married into the House of Romanov had to become members of the Russian Orthodox Church and that usually entailed changing their name, partly because of the limited number of given names officially recognized by the Orthodox Church. However, princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst did not choose the existing Russian form of her name (Sofya) when she married the heir to the Russian throne, but instead became Katherine (Yekaterina), later Empres Catherine II (the Great).
• French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo, was elected heir to the throne by the Swedish Estates. He had to join the established Lutheran church, and in the process changed his name to the more Swedish Karl Johan, later king Karl (Charles) XIV. "Johan" is Swedish variant of French "Jean".
• Roman Catholic Church
  • Popes usually take a new name upon being elected pope. This custom started with Pope John II in 533, who, prior to becoming pope, was named Mercurius. He felt it inappropriate for a Pope to be named after a Roman god. While it is a custom, it is not a hard and fast rule, and men elected to the papacy are free to use their birth name if they desire. However, this has not happened since the brief reign of Pope Marcellus II in 1555, and every man since then has used a new name upon election.
    • In 1978, Albino Luciani departed from tradition by being the first man to use a double name by combining the names of his two immediate predecessors ^note  Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI when he decided to be called John Paul I. After his very short reign, his successor took the name John Paul II to honor all three men.
    • Upon his election as Pope in 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio decided to use the papal name Francis. This was the first time in several hundred years that a man had taken a Papal name that had not been used previously. It was also the first time in several hundred years that the Pope did not have an ordinal number after his name. (John Paul I specified that he would be known as the first when asked what he would be called). Pope Francis will only be called Francis I if and when a future Pope takes the name Francis.
  • Catholic nuns often take a new name upon taking their final vows.
  • Less significantly for the purposes of this trope, Catholic teens take a saint's name upon receiving the sacrament of Confirmation, although these days their Confirmation name may often in fact be the same as their birth name (if they happened to be named after a saint); even if it is not, they tend to continue to be addressed by their birth name in practice, so this last one isn't nearly as good an example of this trope.
• Other real-life examples for monarchs (as well as more fictional examples) can be found in the Regnal Name article on The Other Wiki.
• In European nobility the title(s) held within a certain family can take precedence over the family name, including when the holder(s) sign papers, etc. This works to such an extent that sometimes the original name is widely forgotten (for instance, outside of Britain not too many people recall that the Duke of Marlborough's family name is Churchill). The change from one name to another can indicate an individual's position within the family hierarchy. To use a fictional example to illustrate this real-world phenomenon, in P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings novels, there is the Threepwood family headed by Clarence, Ninth Early of Emsworth, who is colloquially referred to as Lord Emsworth and would sign letters "Emsworth". His elder son, his prospective heir, is Lord Bosham, holder of a minor Threepwood title that presumably was born by his father while the Eight Earl of Emsworth was still alive.
  • A real-world example from France: In the house of Bourbon-Condé, a side-branch of the royal house of France, the head of the family was the Prince of Condé (referred to as simply "Monsieur le Prince" at the royal court) and his prospective heir was the Duke of Enghien.
  • Also the Cavendish family of England—the head of the family is the Duke of Devonshire, and his eldest son is (traditionally) the Marquis of Hartington (though for some reason he may also style himself 'Lord Cavendish'.)
  • When Napoléon Bonaparte became Emperor, he made his brothers and his brother-in-law Joachim Murat take Napoleon as a second name when he made them monarchs of other countries, clearly a reminder of just who put them on their thrones. When he also started to award titles of Duke and Prince to various marshals, generals, and ministers, he also was very punctilious to use these new titles instead of the family names. It was very noticeable that except in cases where it could not be avoided (e. g. Marshal Kellerman, Duke of Valmy, who was too old to have served under Napoleon) he generally gave the generals titles referring to battles in which they had served under his command rather than independently. Thus Marshal Masséna was made Duke of Rivoli and later Prince of Essling rather than e. g. Duke of Zurich (a very important battle Masséna won in 1799 before Napoleon's coup d'état).
• Lots of Communist revolutionaries did this.
  • Josef Stalin was born as "Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili", later Russified the name to "Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili", took the secret name "Koba" during the Bolshevik Revolution, and then changed to "Stalin" ("Man of Steel") to symbolize his power, his distancing himself from his Georgian heritage, and his new Soviet identity. The notable part is that, apparently, "Stalin" is grammatically incorrect since noun formation doesn't work like that in Russian—but would you say so to Stalin? (He'd probably say, "Well, now it does!")
  • Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, though it doesn't appear to be a symbolic change (it was just one of several pen names he used to dodge the Okhrana). Indeed, when the Soviets went around went around renaming cities after Bolshevik leaders, they freely renamed Simbirsk (Lenin's hometown) "Ulyanovsk"—a name it retains even after the fall of the Soviet Union.
  • Lev Bronstein changed his name to Leon Trotsky (conveniently hiding his Jewish identity) when escaping from Siberia for the first time. The name, incidentally, was a joke—at the time it would heave been seen as a typical "backwards provincial Ukrainian" name, and Trotsky (by his own telling) took it from a guard at a prison he had been held at in Odessa.
  • Yugoslavia's Tito, formerly Josip Broz.
  • Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh (meaning "he who brings the light", who used 2 or 3 other meaningful names, including Nguyen Ai Quoc, or Nguyen the Patriot),
  • China's Sun Yat-sen, born Sūn Démíng, used several other names during his life.
• Various Palestinian leaders, many of whom liked using the kunya, or Arab inverse Patronymic, i.e. calling yourself "Abu [name of eldest son]" (where "Abu" means "father of"). Often the son was fake, adding an extra level of confusion (e.g. Yasser Arafat went by "Abu Ammar", but had no son by that name); other times, the name was real (e.g. Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, whose eldest son really was named Mazen).
• Some people who changed their identity to escape from Nazi persecution and/or fight in the Resistance retained their new names afterwards:
  • French general Jacques-Philippe Leclerc was born Philippe Francois Marie, comte de Hauteclocque.
  • Social Democratic (West) German federal chancellor Willy Brandt was born Herbert Frahm.
• The brothers Darius Paul Bloch and Marcel Bloch (both from a Jewish family, though Marcel at least converted to Catholicism) were both members of the French Resistance. (Marcel was actually sent to the concentration camps in 1944 for being an ethnic Jew and also for refusing to cooperate with the occupation.) Darius was an armor general and gave himself the Resistence nom de guerre "Chardasso", from the French "char d'assault" for "tank"; his brother, an aerospace engineer, adopted "Dassault" based on this. After the war, they both formally changed their surname to "Dassault", giving rise to France's premier military aviation company.
• In a somewhat humorous example, NFL player Chad Johnson changed his name to Chad Ochocinco in the mistaken belief it was the Spanish word for his jersey number, eighty-five. In fact it translates as eightfive. Ochenta y cinco is eighty-five in Spanish. (He would later change his name back to Johnson.)
• Christopher McCandless renamed himself Alexander Supertramp after he graduated from college, gave away all his money, and decided to wander the country, as documented in the book and film Into the Wild.
• Several cities have more than one name reflecting each time they have been conquered. Sometimes it might be advisable to be careful which name you use, as that reflects who the "legitimate" owner is and the locals might be touchy.
  • Sankt-Peterburg was renamed Petrograd during World War I to become less "German" and more "Russian",
  • Leningrad to honour the father of the Soviet Union, and then after the fall of communism, it became Sankt-Peterburg again.
  • After the so-called battle of Hastings, the place where it actually had happened (Senlac) became Battle, after the battle of Minden (1759) the nearby village of Tonhausen ("clay-houses") was renamed Totenhausen ("dead men's houses"), and Eschenbach, home of the medieval poet Wolfram of Eschenbach, is now called Wolframs Eschenbach.
  • A well-known American example is the city of New York, formerly Nieuw Amsterdam.
  • The Northern Irish city formerly known as Londonderry. It was originally called Derry (Gaelic: Doire), but was officially renamed during the 17th century, although until the 1960s both names were generally used interchangeably. Since then Unionists (Protestants) typically prefer to call it by its original name, and that name is still used on most maps. Nationalists (Catholics) disapprove of the use of the word 'London' in the name, and insist on calling it 'Derry'. Because of the still politically charged nature of the area, and lingering memories of the troubles, one must be careful of what name is used. Local radio announcers have resolved the issue by calling the city London/Derry, pronounced "London-Stroke-Derry", or "Stroke City".
  • The city of Byzantium was renamed to "Nova Roma" (New Rome), but was widely known as Contantinopolis (Modern, Constantinople, the City of Constantine). Currently, it is known as "Istanbul", the Turkish form of a Greek phrase (''eis ten polin", to "The City") that was used during the Byzantine era. However, during the Ottoman period, it was known as "Konstantiniyye" (the Turkish form of "Constantine"), even in official texts.
• During the French Revolution a number of place-names were changed because they included references to royalty or specific kings, running from streets and places (e. g. the Place de la Concorde, formerly Place Louis XV in Paris) to cities and islands (e. g. Réunion, formerly the Isle de Bourbon). Many of these renamings survive to this day. During the Reign of Terror, there were also renamings of cities, etc. that rebelled against the revolutions once these rebellions were suppressed. Thus Lyon became Commune affranchie ("liberated community"), Toulon Port-de-la-Montagne ("port of the mountain", a reference to the radical Montagnards in the national convention), Marseilles Ville-sans-nom ("city without a name") and the dapartment of the Vendée Vengée ("avenged") for a time.
• Many noblemen who supported the French Revolution — or at least wanted to pretend they did — dropped the aristocratic-sounding "de" from their name or fused it with the rest, and abandoned their seigneurial names in a similar fashion: examples include Louis-Nicolas Davout (formerly d'Avout), Louis-Antoine Desaix (des Aix de Veygoux) and Etienne Bordesoulle (Etienne Tardif de Pommeroux de Bordesoulle). For most of them, the change stuck even after the Restoration.
• In Nazi Germany hundreds of towns and villages, especially in East Prussia and Silesia, were renamed because their names were too obviously Slavic or Lithuanian in origin. In the case of northern East Prussia, which became part of the Russian Federation after World War II, all towns and villages then got all-new Russian names rather than reverting to the old Lithuanian and West Slavic names, partly to set off the Kaliningrad from neighboring Lithuania (then the Lithuanian SSR).
• Lithuanian capital Vilnius went through several phases of this. While the historical capital of Lithuania, it was, by the beginning of the 20th century, a mostly Polish-speaking city with largely Jewish population surrounded by mostly Belarusian countryside. It was also known by several different names among various ethnicities. It officially became Vilnius, the Lithuanian version, once the Lithuanians took it over when Poland was defeated in 1939 by the Germans and the Soviets. In a peculiar concession to Lithuanian national sentiment, Soviets officially kept the name Vilnius even in Russian references after annexing Lithuania later that year, rather than Vilna as it was previously known to the Russians.
• Renamings of streets etc. are one of the most common forms of meaningful renames, reflecting changing attitudes to historical figures and events. East Germany went through two big waves of this, first under the Nazis, then under Soviet occupation and during the GDR.
  • World War II-era renamings in Russia (and Russian controlled territories) became the basis of the following joke: A Russian Guide in Moscow says to a visiting British military officer in 1942: "This is Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel", "We are on the Churchill street, formerly Hitler street", "The Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station." The British officer: "Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!"
  • A recent example from West Germany: In 2012 a referendum was held in Münster in Westphalia to rename the Hindenburgplatz in front of the university building (and former episcopal palace) to its pre-World War 1 name Schlossplatz ("palace square") in view of Hindenburg's crucial role in helping Hitler to power.
  • In the 1970s Glasgow City Council renamed a street 'Nelson Mandela Square' in honour of the ANC leader, then still in prison. It just happened to be the street where the South African Consulate is located...
  • After 1870, most Italian cities with a cathedral renamed the main street going to said church after September 20, the date the Italian troops occupied Rome and ended the Papal opposition to the unification. A rare exception is Rome itself, that instead renamed after the date the street starting at Porta Pia, the gate in the walls the Italians broke through.
• Many early Zionists replaced their names with Hebrew names, to erase remnants of their life in exile and to show their commitment to a new Jewish nation. This turned into an official policy during the administration of Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (originally Grün), when all state officials were ordered to Hebraize their surnames. And while new olim (immigrants) to Israel today often retain their surnames, many if not most will change their given names to their Hebrew names (famous refusenik Anatoly Sharansky kept his surname but adopted the Hebrew name Natan upon emigrating to Israel).
• Many immigrants to the United States changed their names either to blend in better in their new surroundings or to avoid majority prejudices against their particular ethnic group (or out of exasperation with Anglophones trying to pronounce it properly). There is a myth that many immigrants were assigned new, usually British-sounding names by immigration officials at Ellis Island, but this is untrue; at most, some of them might have inadvertently anglicised the spelling or pronunciation and the new arrivals decided to just go with it for simplicity's sake.
  • Also happened to the US-born children of immigrants. For just one notable example, Lukasz Musial, a Polish immigrant to Pennsylvania whose original family name was Musiał (the last letter of which does not exist in English), and his wife Mary gave their fifth child the names Stanislaw Franciszek. However, when the boy was enrolled in school, his name was officially anglicized to Stanley Frank Musial. Yes, that Stan Musial.
• Slaveholders would often give a newly acquired slave a new name, which could involve the given name and the family name (often the slave-owner's own).
• A lot of people are called by the name their parents gave them as kids, but as they get older, they'll start going by their middle name or a nickname for any number of reasons.
• The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, being a very German name, was not that popular an appellation in Britain during World War I. It became even less popular when the German air force started bombing raids against London using their Gotha bomber. As a result, in 1917 they changed their name to The House of Windsor, of whom you have probably heard.
  • This was reportedly in response to H. G. Wells' complaint about Britain's "alien and uninspiring" court. George V is said to have said, "I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm alien!"
  • George Bernard Shaw took a more cynical view of this in the 1919 preface to his play Heartbreak House:
  "Tearing the Garter from the Kaiser's leg, striking the German dukes from the roll of our peerage, changing the King's illustrious and historically appropriate surname for that of a traditionless locality, was not a very dignified business; but the erasure of German names from the British rolls of science and learning was a confession that in England the little respect paid to science and learning is only an affectation which hides a savage contempt for both."
  • Speaking of the royal family, it will eventually become the house of Mountbatten-Windsor; the Mountbatten name is also the result of a similar Meaningful Rename when Lord Battenberg caved in to British Germanophobia during World War I (funnily enough, they did not rename Battenberg Cake in Britain). On the other hand, the royal house of Belgium, another branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha with grievances against German, did not change its name and continues to use it to this day.
    • They did technically change the name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Belgium, it is used in official documents and identity cards, though it is still called its original name by everyone.
• British monarchs haven been known to take different regnal names from time to time.
  • After the death of King George V, his elder son Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David ruled as King Edward VIII, despite having gone by the name David most of his life with his family and close friends. Similarly, his brother Albert Frederick Arthur George decided to rule as King George VI in honor of his father upon his brother Edward's abdication despite having gone by the name "Bertie" among his friends and family.
  • This was averted in the case of George VI's daughter Elizabeth, who said she would continue to use the name Elizabeth once she became Queen.
  • Prior to the death of Elizabeth II there was speculation that Charles would use the regnal name George VII in honor of his grandfather, and to avoid association with the two previous English Kings named Charles. However, after Elizabeth's death in 2022 Charles averted this by deciding to reign as King Charles III.
• During World War II, references to Axis countries became illegal in Brazil. Hence two teams known as Palestra Italia, founded by immigrants, changed their names - one in São Paulo became Palmeiras to retain the logo with a "P", while one in Belo Horizonte became Cruzeiro to keep the blue uniforms.
• In the 20th century, members of ethnic minorities in various European countries either chose to adopt a name more in keeping with that of the majority ethnicity or were compelled to do so. With frontiers moving on a few occasions, this could happen more than once to the same family.
  • The phenomenon is somewhat older. For instance, when Corsica's bid for independence was defeated and the island indisputably became part of the Kingdom of France, the small nobleman Carlo Buonaparte frenchified his name to Charles Bonaparte and his sons Giuseppe, Napoleone and Luciano officially became Joseph, Napoléon and Lucien (even though they continued to use the Italian forms at home for years). This move was looked upon as a sell-out by Corsican nationalists, while in later years some of Napoléon's enemies would treat it as foul imposture by someone who wasn't really French at all and therefore pointedly referred to him as Buonaparte.
  • A recent example of this was the late Turkish weightlifting great born in Bulgaria as Naim Suleimanov. During his early weightlifting career, Bulgaria forced all of its Turkish minority to change their names, and he then became Naum Shalmanov. After defecting to Turkey not long before Hole in Flag, he took back his original given name and Turkicized his family name, thereby becoming Naim Süleymanoğlu.
• Averted by the town of Wolfsburg, Germany. The town hosts the gigantic factories of Volkswagen AG and was originally founded by the Nazi Party, and named simply Stadt des KdF-Wagens (Town of KdF Cars). The British occupation changed the name in 1945 to Wolfsburg after a nearby castle to de-Nazify the town. In this case, a meaningful name was changed into something non-meaningful.
• A district of India held a renaming ceremony for 285 girls named Unwanted ("Nakusa" or "Nakushi" in Hindi) in an effort to fight gender discrimination caused by religious restrictions and the expense of marrying off a daughter.
• Almost without exception, this is the case for transgender people. Often this will involve taking the name of someone they respect (real or fictional). It can be a Meaningful Name in addition to Meaningful Rename if the name is something like the other gendered name their parents picked out or carries some other significance (although a Sobriquet Sex Switch is a lot rarer than most cisgender people seem to believe). This is also often part of the legal process of being recognised as their actual gender (in countries where human rights have sufficiently progressed to allow it). This naturally also leaves them with the inverse of this trope; their deadname (so called because — depending on how cheerful you feel — it's linguistically dead, like Latin, or because it's the name you're buried under if you die before you can change it^note or write a will).
• In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, especially in Germany, it was quite fashionable for people to show off their erudition by changing their names to a Latin or Greek name that was either a direct or loose translation of their original name (e. g. Neander (Greek: new man) for Neumann, Agricola (Latin: peasant, farmer) for Bauer) or something with a similar sound. Thus Jean Cauvin became Johannes Calvin(us), and one of Martin Luther's closest collaborators interpreted his name Schwarzert as Schwarz-Erd ("black earth") before translating it into Greek as Melanchthon. Martin Luther himself looked at this with some amusement and said that if he ever did this himself, he would call himself Eleutherius, a name that sounds like an elaboration of Luther and is based on Greek eleutheria ("freedom").
  • The man now known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is listed in the original baptismal record as Joannes Christophus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart; since this document was written in Latin, it is not clear if 'Theophilus' means that his third name was actually 'Gottlieb' (which means the same thing) or 'Theophil'. When he first travelled to Italy, he discovered the Italian form of the name, 'Amadeo', and started using that, although he soon preferred using the French form 'Amadé'. He never did use Amadeus, though, and people who knew him well enough apparently just called him Wolfgang (or derivations thereof).
• When writer Gary Keillor starting submitting stories to magazines he changed/"extended" his first name to Garrison because it sounded more distinguished.
• Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was born with the name Michael King, as was his father. The elder King changed both their names in honour of Martin Luther when the younger King was five years old — King Jr. grew up to become a Protestant preacher.
• The French Foreign Legion used to require applicants to sign up under a different name, though this is now optional.
• After the fall of Fascist Italy during World War II, the destroyer Camicia Nera ("Blackshirt") and the battleship Littorio ("Lictor") were renamed Artigliere ("Artilleryman") and Italia, as the previous names were too closely associated with the Fascist regime.
• During the Turkish War of Independence, three provinces, Maraş, Urfa and Antep, saw some of the heaviest fighting. After independence in 1923, these provinces had honorary titles added to their official names, becoming Kahramanmaraş (Maraş the Heroic), Şanlıurfa (Urfa the Glorious) and Gaziantep (Antep the Veteran^note This title should not be considered Damned by Faint Praise in comparison with the others. Although the direct translation for "Gazi" is "Veteran", it generally refers to someone heavily injured in the line of duty, similar to a Purple Heart recipient, and therefore denotes significant respect in the Turkish culture). Unlike most examples in Please Select New City Name, the shorter and longer versions are both acceptable, though the longer versions are considered more formal.
• Carl Linnaeus, the naturalist who invented taxonomic nomenclature, would have been named Nilsson as per Scandinavian tradition, had his father not adopted this trope to complete his enrollment paperwork at the University of Lund. Needing something to put down as a "family name", Nils chose "Linnaeus" in reference to a gigantic linden tree that grew on the family property.
  • Carl is better known in modern Sweden as Carl von Linné, which is what he called himself after being knighted. His family kept changing their surname as they gradually moved up from one social class to another, Nilsson being a farmer's name, Linnaeus being a scholar's name, and von Linné being an aristocrat's name.
• Black civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael adopted the name "Kwame Ture" (in reference to African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré) in order to link his own name to his pan-African ideals, as he rejected the idea that black people should just integrate into white institutions. He passed down the name "Ture" to his children too.
• An inverse of the example from the film Air Force One happened when Richard Nixon resigned. Nixon was onboard Air Force One when his resignation took effect and Ford was sworn in. The pilot then radioed the air traffic controllers to officially change the plane's call sign from Air Force One to SAM 27000 (the standard call sign used for the plane when it wasn't transporting the president).
• J. D. Vance, whose first entered the public eye as the author of Hillbilly Elegy and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, did this when he married his Yale Law classmate Usha Chilukuri in 2014. The future author and senator, whose last name before the wedding was Hamel, did not want to use the name of the stepfather who had abandoned him and saw a chance to symbolically start a new life. He and his wife took the name of the grandparents who had largely raised him.
• NBA player Enes Kanter, effectively rendered stateless by his former home of Turkey^note he was born in Switzerland while his Turkish father was doing university research, and had only held Turkish citizenship in 2017 due to his activism against the country's leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, did this when he became a US citizen in November 2021. While he kept his original name, he legally adopted the new surname of Freedom, obviously symbolizing his feelings upon gaining a new home country.
• The custom of "quốc tính" - "surname of the nation", i.e. the family name of the king, since the king is the father of the nation - appeared briefly in Vietnamese history during the Lý and Trần dynasties. It was awarded to people who made great contributions to the ruling dynasty. For example, Lý Thường Kiệt was born Ngô Tuấn (or Quách Tuấn, depending on the source), renamed Ngô Thường Kiệt as an adult, and awarded the surname Lý for his military successes and wise counsel. This was stopped in 1467 (the Lê dynasty), and Emperor Lê Thánh Tông allowed descendants of the people awarded surnames to return to their original names.
  • The custom of renaming continues, after a fashion, to this day. Initially, children were referred to with simple, if not plain "no one sane would actually call your child that" names, in order to avoid attracting demonic attention. It was believed that demons liked children with beautiful names, and would kill the children. They would be addressed with fancier names upon adulthood. The rigors of this custom have relaxed, as children nowadays can get "home names" like Puppy, Kitty, or even foreign-sounding names. However, as compulsory education came into effect, children had to be addressed by their legal names at school. Hilarity Ensues (or aggravation) annually for teachers, because many parents forget to teach their first-graders to respond to their legal names.
• The high school located in San Anselmo, California (north of San Francisco) had a ridiculously convoluted example of this. It had been Sir Francis Drake High School, home of the Pirates, since 1951, named for the street it's located on, which was named in honor of Drake because of his 1579 voyage to the nearby coast. In 2020, concern over Drake's connection to the slave trade led the school district to remove his name from the school, temporarily renaming it High School 1327^explanationIts address is 1327 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. while taking suggestions for a new name. A long list was whittled down to eight names, including George Lucas High School (Lucas is a longtime resident of San Anselmo) and San Anselmo High School.^*The district indicated that it didn't like this name, because the school's attendance area included other towns besides San Anselmo, and, having a saint's name, even in Spanish, might seem non-inclusive to non-Catholic students Finally it came down to two finalists: Bon Tempe (the name of a nearby reservoir) and Olema Trail (the old name for the route of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in the language of the Miwok people). But Miwok representatives objected to having their language used for the school's name, so Olema Trail was eliminated. With only Bon Tempe left standing, three other names were quickly added to the list: Cascade, Oak Valley and Archie Williams, the latter being an African-American Olympic runner who later taught at the school. In May 2021 it officially became Archie Williams High School, home of the Falcons.
• One of the most notorious headlines of 2021 was a story about a promotion by a sushi chain in Taiwan. The condition was that the person who wanted free sushi for themself and their five friends had to change their name to "Salmon". Almost 200 people complied and at least one person was stuck with his new name, as Taiwan law only allows three name changes in a lifetime. (No word on what Mr Chang's previous renames were though.)
• When he decided to abandon traditional Ancient Egyptian religious practices and institute Atenism as Egypt's state religion, Pharaoh Amenhotep IV ("Amun is satisfied") changed his name to Akhenaten ("Effective for the Aten") to demonstrate his change of faith. After his death, a backlash against Atenism took place, leading his son Tutankhaten ("Living image of Aten") to instead adopt the name Tutankhamun ("Living image of Amun") to show that he wouldn't continue his father's hated religious policies.
• Following their purchase of 20th Century Fox, Disney proceeded to rename the film company to 20th Century Studios as a way to distance the studio from its former owner Fox Corporation, who own the television networks FOX and Fox News.
• Guthrum the Old, one of the leaders of the Great Heathen Army of (mostly Danish) vikings who invaded England in the 9th century, ended up converting to Christianity as part of the peace terms upon his defeat by Alfred the Great. This frankly was actually in Guthrum's interests, as he had wanted to become King of East Anglia, which title the same peace treaty allowed him to claim. Upon his conversion, he adopted the name "Æthelstan", which—interestingly—wasn't specifically Christian (it's an Old English name meaning "noble stone" or (less literally) "gem/jewel"),^note It's cognate with the (stereotypically Jewish) German surname "Edelstein" but was very Anglo-Saxon/English, suggesting his choice had as much to do with ingratiating himself to his new subjects as to his new faith.
• When Kelly Clarkson went through a divorce, she went through an extreme case of The Maiden Name Debate: instead of just changing back from her ex's surname, she removed it altogether, and her legal name is now Kelly Brianne.
• Supposedly happened three times to an unfortunate man living in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France (French up to 1870 when Germany took over, then French again after 1918, then German again between 1940 and 1944, has remained French since): His original name was Gare, but the Germans who took over mispronounced it as "Vahre", which became his new name. When the French reclaimed it they misheard it as "Vache" (cow). The WW2 Germans then addressed him as Kuh (cow in German). When the region returned to the French, Mr. Kuh was now known as Mr. Ass (as "kuh" sounds like "cul").
• The Swedish zoo Skansen had a famous King Kobra named Sir Väs (the Swedish name of Sir Hiss from Disney's Robin Hood (1973). Then Sir Väs escaped from his terrarium in the fall of 2022, forcing the aquarium portion of the zoo to close down the better part of the week he was missing. Once he was located and returned home he was renamed Houdini.
• British writer Eric Arthur Blair combined the name of England's patron saint and the name of a river near his home in Suffolk in adopting the Pen Name of George Orwell.
• GSC Game World renamed the upcoming sequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. from Heart of Chernobyl to Heart of Chornobyl, to do away with the Russian pronunciation and use the Ukrainian one instead, since there's been considerable consolidation of Ukrainian patriotism in the wake of the mass scale invasion by Russia that started in 2022.