I am one of 10 kids. My mom had her first at 16 and if you can imagine she wasn’t very mature. We ended up being called ridiculous names in my opinion and it goes as far as the first 5 letters of all our names had to be the same so they all sound very similar. I think this was testament to my mom’s ego.
I hated my name growing up. It’s extremely long, hard to pronounce, I was laughed at in school, and used to dread my name being butchered in the register. I still don’t understand why parents give their kids such a hard time with their first name in the honour of being “unique”. My kids are called Mia and Henry just so they don’t have to go through what I did. Most people didn’t even say my name growing up because they couldn’t and I always felt like I wasn’t an individual because of how many siblings I had with the same ridiculous part of their names too. For example; our names are like grapely grapemia grapesia grapefire if that makes sense (not actually grape of course but equally as ridiculous.)
Long story short, as an adult I have shortened my name. I have a degree but I now want to change careers and I think I am more likely to get a decent job with a normal name as i know first hand that even though companies shouldn’t discriminate, they will. I’d have to change all my documents (passport etc.) does this seem like too much? Should I just leave it?