Child wants to change name

[time2changeCharlieBrown]

My son is 7 and wants to change his name! Forename
hes one of two in the same class and to make matters complicated they have the same surname too! Surname is quite common but fore name is not the most popular but still relatively well known just not in any top 50 names
let’s say he’s Charlie Brown
they call them Charlie B and Charlie Brown but often they gat the same Charlie Brown it is confusing and often get items lists clubs etc mixed up
for example I’ll go collect him to find out he’s been sent to after school club even though he’s not signed up!
also I’ve received pictures and letters of the other Charlie Brown
there’s also other Charlie’s in the school

the other Charlie is also quite misbehaved and often into trouble
he broke a window and every one was talking about it, kids and parents and we had to keep on correcting
it also caused issues at beavers and cubs when signing him up as the other one is older and they said he has a space I had to point out the dob was different the child is different!

my son is now asking to be called Benjamin (the name we almost chose for him)
and he says Ben for short he knows no other Ben despite it being popular name.
he says it’s embarrassing when everyone looks at him in assembly or class especially when they are shouting Charlie Brown sit down be quiet and telling him off!

my son is quiet and reserved.

im kicking myself for not giving him a middle name on the birth certificate and we nearly used Benjamin, wish I’d have used Benjamin Charlie but alas too late! Shame certificate cannot be changed. As then he could have a choice of his name to choose. It seems wrong to change it if it can’t be officially changed.

my husband said no to change and he can be good Charlie other is naughty charlie

ive said I’m not sure as don’t see the point in changing it by deed poll as it seems pointless and complicated
but if we could change the birth certificate I probably would to Benjamin Charlie as he wants

so Aibu or (we my husband and I)
to say no to our 7 year old name change request??

(obviously names have been changed)

It will become extremely irrelevant as he gets older. I think you and he may look back and say it looks foolish that you changed your name permanently because there was a naughty boy in your primary school class with the same moniker.
You could unofficially say his middle name is Benjamin, and then he could use it if he likes but making it official seems a bit excessive. I used a shortened version of my name in primary school, then wanted to use the longer version as it sounded more grown up when I went to secondary. Who says he won't decide to change it again when he's older?

What a sensible lad. I’d let him use it at school for a term and if it solves the problems then do a deed poll in the summer holidays to add it to his names, either Benjamin Charles or Charles Benjamin whatever he wants.

This was common though, in the last 50 years or so.
"Nanna Betty" was really Ethel.
"Cousin Kathie" was really Eleanor
"Uncle Jim" was really John
Took me ages to find my grandmother's birth details as the name she always used wasn't her official name.

Schools usually have the capacity to have a 'known as' on their register. My DC has a variant of their name that they use at school.

We had this situation at my son’s school.
One boy was Charlie A and other became Charlie A-B with B being mother’s maiden name. At secondary he reverted to Charlie A as they were in different classes.

This is true, I had two elderly aunts who I never realised went by their middle names until I saw their full names printed on the order of service at their funerals.

I wouldn’t jump straight to changing officially but I think you need something done fast because it’s obviously upsetting. First name annd surname the same is incredibly unfortunate. Ultimately it’s a school problem. School teachers need a way of uniquely identifying each and there can be no ambiguity about who’s been told off or who’s getting sent which photos. That’s a massive safeguarding breach I would be pulling them up on. I would push for school for neither to be known as Charlie Brown as it’s too ambiguous. If your son wants to go as Ben fine or CB. Maybe other child has a middle name say Sam and they can be Charlie Sam or Charlie S.

and seriously to the poster who suggested Big Charlie and Little Charlie 100% inappropriate 🙄same for naughty Charlie. Wtf we’re you thinking

I would let him add a name.

Just tell the school his preferred name is Ben. No need to make it formal his only seven and might change his mind once he moves school

I would ask the school to change to known by, then maybe in a year deed pool him to Benjamin Charlie Surname. Your husband must know, no matter how tempting, you can't have bad Charlie 😂

I've had pupils with the same first and last name before as a teacher. It's a bit of a nightmare! I accidentally emailed the wrong parents once about something quite confidential related to SEN.

I understand this completely. My brother and I have similar names and were in the same grade at school but not the same class. Add to the mix my name is often misread as a completely male name and his could be a female's. So lots of confusion between my brother and I - even to the point where I was signed up for boys gym class and him for girls.

Add to the confusion I ended up in a math class in upper school with 3 boys who had "my" male name and the teacher never was clear who he was calling on. We tried to make a joke of it but the teacher was not amused.

As an alternative for Charlie, could he be called Chuck? There was a time when our family used to refer to the royals by nicknames that were current where we lived. So there was Liz and Flip (Philip) and Chuck and Di.

But why is this better than using Ben?

Why is Harry for Henry acceptable but Ben for Charlie not? Weird rules

I would go with him wanting to be called Ben at school. Ask the school to make it his "known by" name. It's really not a big thing, and as other posters say, loads of students use them. As an ageing teacher, the most challenging thing for me is to remember the name change. See how it goes. You don't need to go as far as changing it by deed poll if you don't want to at this point, but it would help to alleviate the current issue for your DS.

To the poster who implied that schools anglicise students' names, that's rubbish in my experience. We do get a lot of students whose chosen name is nothing like their legal name. Because we have been a Teams school for 5 years now, I am used to looking out for them, but a kid in my y7 tutor group 5 years ago called Mia was definitely not Mia on Teams, which had her legal name. Another kid was known by popular first name, mum's surname but legally he had a Spanish first name and dad's surname. Took me a while to work it out as registers had the known by names, only Teams had the legal ones.

I didn’t imply anything of the sort - I just said that some student choose their own anglicized version of their name. Nowhere did I say that school imposed this, just that we supported it.

@IncognitoUsername I know. I agree with you. It was @velvetydogtoy who seemed to think that schools went around picking random names for kids.

Not a pleasant situation to be in, could the new 'middle' name be one reflecting someone from his heritage?

If he/you goes/go ahead with a name change I'd suggest making sure Ben is a significantly less common name for his cohort than Charlie or you risk the whole situation arising again.

As an aside I'm really sad that so many people are happy to label a 7 year old as naughty.

where I work we have an adult labelled "naughty" to differentiate between adults of the same name 😂

Yes very unlikely since they moved here two years ago to be near family and just bought a house

lol 😂

I had a friend called Matthew that for some reason everyone called Fred
I also have three names
The one my family use, the one I was called at school a shortened version of my full name and the one from Uni days onwards another shortened version
Think eg Angelina….so Angel….and …Lena

The point is

Just make up a nickname and tell everyone
Use Ben if you like,

Yes “Benjamin” was a family member , who was alive when my son was born but no longer ,is hence I’m even more sad that I didn’t use it! So wish I had now

So this is part of my annoyance I’ve had letters and emails and photos of the wrong child!! It is annoying

Thanks for the information

Ben's a nice name and ds is quite right to want to be called Ben, in the circs. The birth certificate isn't relevant.