If you had to change your name what would you choose?

[JamesWebbSpaceTelescope]

Image you have to go into witness protection scheme or you are on the run from the police or you want to write a book about a walk but you have lots of debts.

You need a new full name for yourself and your family. What would you choose? Would you go with your middle name, a family name or completely made up?

I would go with Elinor Gray (totally made up) DH Stewart (family name and I’m not giving him a choice in this game).

I actually do have the same name as a celebrity past their peak now, but mega in thejr day. It's great being difficult to google. There's pages and pages before you find me. So i'd choose a "famous" name that was easy to spell, and unremarkable except for belonging to someone famous. Meg Ryan maybe.

Harriet Appleby

Harriet is my favourite girls name but I never got to use it as I had boys! So I choose it for myself.

Georgiana Fox

I’d be Kitty McSwinger. She sounds like she’d always be up for a good time 😬

Electra Kilgarrif - so my BFF could find me in an instant!

When I was younger my author name was going to be Melissa Rivers (a mash up of middle name and alternative meaning of surname) until I actually started working with a Melissa Rivers!

And we all go and google what Monomyn means. It’ll make good name for a pop group.

She certainly does. I can just picture her now, down the pub, centre of attention, and liked by all.

Am currently deciding on characters’ names for a Mills and Boon book I will never write..
I have
Glennard McKay (dark, brooding Scottish laird, likes to ski)
Loveday Summer (not sure yet)

Not bad for six months’ work
If anyone else wants to write this book instead, I gift you these names…

Suze and Tarquin Cleath- Stewart.

And on a tangent, actually, I am known widely by a diminutive version of my name (think Meg for Margaret). I’d love to be known now by the full name, is it too late to shift towards that after 40 years? How would I do that?

I always wanted to be Jacqueline Prideaux. Jacqueline isn't far from my real name, and I went to school with somebody whose surname was Prideaux. I just think they go well together.

Clementine Faraday. I wrote a story when I was at school and that name just came to me out of nowhere as a character and I’ve always kept it in the bank just in case 😂

Alex McDonald

Brydon (family name on my dad’s side) Fox (favourite animal). As a middle name I like Abigail.

Brydon is also a name in my family - I wonder if we're related 🤔

Guinivere Holt for my fantasy life.
Susan Fisher for disappearing.

I think that simply calling yourself 'Name' would be quite meta, actually.

It would be satisfying when forms ask 'Your Name' - and you could add an apostrophe and an 'e' to make it 'You're' and then write 'Correct!'

I once met a lady called Winifred Drawbridge which is fantastic name which is like to take on. ( it was some years ago and I imagine she'd probably no longer be with us now) .
But in witness protection id probably go for something like Julia Stevens

Maribel Winterpark.

But for witness protection, probably something a little more pedestrian like Charlotte MacBeth. 😆

I see you as the mysterious type, @BatshitIsTheOnlyExplanation

Cool, Parisien, stylish - with a slightly dry sense of humour. Men fall over themselves when you appear and you find this amusing and a bit pathetic of them!

I’d be Rowena Appleton. Grandmother’s maiden name and the name my parents considered for me.

I don't particularly care for my name, though I like how my dh has turned it into a nice nickname, but I think I'd quite like to be called Alice with an old long lost family surname.
I love the name Clementine, it's my cousins youngest's name, but had never heard of Clementina, and reading the wiki link about Clementina Black what a woman!

I actually know people with three of these names so far.

I’d go Juliet Summers but witness protection I’d go Julia Stiles as it’s a lesser known celebrity name that could conceivably also coincidentally be my name.

I've always hated my name, it's not a common name and it made me stand out which I hated alot when younger. I can tolerate it a bit better now. I think I'd pick Kate Harrington.

I’d be Maggie Hague

Princess Consuela Banana Hammock