People removing their surnames from their Facebook names

[asblindasabat]

I’ve seen this a few times, where friends of mine will just randomly change remove their surname from their Facebook name and add their middle name instead.

No real point to this post except for the fact I’m nosey, curious and want to know why some people do this 😂

I don't have a middle name either 😭

Are we allowed to make one up?

I do this because I do voluntary work at a male homeless hostel and I don't want them to be able to find me.

I did it a few years ago because I was working on a public engagement for a relatively controversial project and i didn't want people looking me up on social media!

I don't even have my real name on there. It's an approximation of it. Mainly because I got contacted on social media out of the blue a few years ago by a creepy guy who used to be a penpal decades ago.
Several of my friends also use the middle name as surname thing.

Don’t want to be stalked by anyone (mostly OLD twats).

So I am not harassed by students.

I work in HE and occasionally have to make difficult decisions about students that they don’t take well. I have had some really vile messages before.

My surname is really unusual so on Facebook I was the only person with my first name and surname. My profile is very locked down but I’d rather is was harder to find me. It’s recommended practice in my sector.

I do this. I like that people don't find me on it unless I tell them.

I have this as I work for a family charity and I've had a few mums say they've seen me on Facebook (posting on local pages etc) so I took my surname off and don't have my photo as my profile pic

I think it's an excellent opportunity to go for the name you've always wanted...

The better option would be to leave Facebook, but I get why some people would want to do this to reduce abuse and other hatred. Given that Facebook and Twitter seem slow to act when that happens.

I might have removed DH’s surname, logged in as him, and rejoined a juicy discussion I’d been blocked from 😳 (with his agreement)

I've got my maiden name on my account, rather than my legal surname. When I ditched the husband, I ditched the name from the easy things.

Yes, it's due to searchability and sadly, also often stalking/not wanting to be found by students/patients/ex. I don't do anything remotely controversial or exciting enough to attract that much attention, but have a colleague who is a fellow academic whose social media name is a scrambled mix of the letters in her first/surname. She ended up on a far right wing 'doxxing' list where people were encouraged to stalk and threaten her because of the nature of her research and she was advised by her university to make herself harder to find for her own safety.

I do this too, I don't have a particularly sensitive job e.g teacher/social worker/police but I'd been hassled by an ex and there were just certain people (like him!) from my past I didn't want finding me too easily. I'm sure they could find me if they really wanted to through friends of friends or whatever but I don't think it hurts to have an extra layer of privacy by just having my first name and an alias second name.

Don't forget to change your URL name too if you're doing this.

@asblindasabat could you really not think of any reason why people might do this?
It's pretty obvious!

I use a different surname.
I have noticed people that change their names often, most work in education.