Physics GRE Discussion Forums

So I'm in a very complicated scenario. I'm planning on changing my name between now and when I go to grad school. But I'm in no position to legally change it until after I go to grad school. Also my name is on the Astrophysical Journal somewhere, and the problem is that it would look somewhat disturbing (to others perhaps?) to have publications under two different names and then put in a "name changed" section in a list of publications.

Has anyone in the academic world successfully changed their name? Granted, my publications were not major, and I didn't do that much work to get them. So once in grad school, I can probably safely change it once I get more publications, perhaps? Still, *no one* I know has ever put "legal name changed" in a CV.

InquilineKea wrote:So I'm in a very complicated scenario. I'm planning on changing my name between now and when I go to grad school. But I'm in no position to legally change it until after I go to grad school. Also my name is on the Astrophysical Journal somewhere, and the problem is that it would look somewhat disturbing (to others perhaps?) to have publications under two different names and then put in a "name changed" section in a list of publications.

Has anyone in the academic world successfully changed their name? Granted, my publications were not major, and I didn't do that much work to get them. So once in grad school, I can probably safely change it once I get more publications, perhaps? Still, *no one* I know has ever put "legal name changed" in a CV.

This is extremely common, and not a big deal. If you want, put an asterisk on the author list of the older publications and put a "name subsequently changed to XX" at the bottom. But that's not even necessary. You could say Mary Smith (nee Jones) on your name on the CV. So there are many options, and no hard and fast rules. With some big databases (arxiv.org, SPIRES, etc.), once your first paper under the new name comes out, just email them and tell them the two names are the same person, and they can link them together.