November 2022

What’s in a Name? On Changing Your Name in Academia

Oh no, I said it.

I said the thing that is the death knell for (primarily) women in academia. “But, but the citations!” or “Job market!?” or “How will they know who you are now!?”

Beneath the hyperbole is an uncomfortable and difficult question: how does one change their name when progression in the academe is so tightly tied to your name, which subsequently becomes your brand? Not all of us will be public intellectuals, but all of us will be subject to the name that appears on a paper and subsequent citations of that knowledge that follow.

So, what do we do? Do we crumble under the pressure? Resign to obscurity?

Hopefully, it will never be so dire. I will dive deeper into my personal rationale and helpful steps if you are going to change it. But, if you came to this post for validation, then just go for it! If it means something to you to change your name (for whatever reason), follow the practical advice below and you will manage.

Rationale

Not that I (or you) need one.

I do find it helpful to speak to the narrative that lead me to changing my last name as it isn’t common. I have heard the motivation many times from many people, but have yet to see public writing in academia on this.

I am changing my last name as a matter of cultural reclamation.

A brief historical perspective

My mother is Filipino and my father is white. We have a complicated history. In my immediate family, there are now five generations of Filipinos living on the Big Island of Hawai’i. My great-great grandmother emigrated from the Philippines to Kohala, where she lived until her passing. My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all lived in Hawai’i for a significant part of their lives. Cousins, aunties, uncles, and many, many extended family members still live there and the Philippines, but my immediate family now all live on the mainland.

Pre-colonization (by the spanish for ~400 years and the US more recently), Filipino culture centered on women as the matriarchs of both family and community. There are innumerable facets of Filipino culture that were ravaged by colonialism, names included. A substantial change was the shift to Western patriarchal familial structures. While naming conventions varied pre-colonization (relational, circumstances of birth, descriptive, etc), there certainly was no uniform name passing from father to child. With the colonization by the spanish, new naming conventions were enforced.

Filipino culture was forced into a patriarchal model of family. One the effects was that women now took their husband’s names as their last name, perpetuating the man’s legacy. As is common in the West. The spanish brutalizing of Filipino people resulted in the spanish names you see today, passed down patrilineally. Though the violence should not be mistaken with lack of intention. A standard tactic of European colonists was the systematic rape of indigenous women (in the Phillippines, North America, and elsewhere) in service of erasing the central role of women, upending communal relationships (rather than nuclear family), and establishing lineages based on the name of the man. All of which systematically deteriorated much pre-colonial Filipino culture.

For the ~400 years of spanish colonization, multiple naming convention models were used. It was messy. For the first time not only were there last names, but now there could be multiple. There could also be multiple first names and middle names. Not only this, but given names became Christian names (often given at baptism rather than birth – also often given by men rather than women). Surnames became complicated. In the spanish tradition, two surnames are taken. The first is the fathers and the second is the mothers maiden name. When a daughter is married, her mothers maiden name is replaced by the man’s. So, instead of one given name, now Filipinos could have five or six names.

With the colonization by the US, name conventions changed once more. It is not common to have multiple last names in the US, so for Filipinos with two last names, one was typically moved to the middle name place and replaced with an initial or removed from public use. While traditional spanish models placed the father’s then mother’s surname, the order was reversed (similar to portuguese naming convention) and the mother’s surname was essentially erased to the middle initial position.

What is left are generations of Filipinos with their names erased, replaced, broken, and some mended. Over and over again. The power, origin, and meaning completely overshadowed. Even with resistance, the most common names in the Philippines are now spanish. Those that survived were from royalty, criminals, and those who were able to outrun the imposed colonized state by living in remote and rural areas.

All-in-all, what I was most intent on learning was if I could outrun patriarchy and colonization. If I could find a name within my family lineage (through the women in my family) that at least rang of Tagalog rather than spanish, that would be the name I would reclaim. I found this one:

Omapang

This is the name I have chosen for myself. It represents the furthest back in my Filipino heritage that I can trace. Anaticla Omapang, the ancestor for whom I now bear her name.

Reflections

As someone who struggles with their multi-racial identity (white with red hair and brown eyes), it struck me one day that a significant part of my heritage could be worn publicly (and proudly) every day if last names were retained matrilineally, or just not imposed on spouses and children in general.

This simple revelation shook me.

My family stopped speaking Tagalog one generation after arriving in Hawai’i. One great-grandparent brought unwillingly to the sugar cane fields and the other born unto the islands. In the generations that followed we lost our food, dance, and song. Irreparable damage to our sense of self, our connection to each other and the land, and our ability to reconnect. Walking this world as a white person, with a white name, I found an opportunity to right this facet of my identity and life. Now, each day I feel a sense of pride to speak my name out in the world. I feel who I am, I feel more connected to my mother, and finally connected to my ancestors who came before me.

Reclamation is healing.

Practical Advice

Okay, it’s all well and good to do the deep reflective work of understanding why you want to change your name and which name you want to hold. However, if you are an academic in the West, then there are a few things to keep in mind:

- You don’t have to change your name legally to start using your new name for your publications. You technically never need to change your legal name if your only goal is to publish under this new name.
- Change your Google Scholar/ORCiD/ResearchGate/SCOPUS/Web of Science/etc. This is really easy now! You can even add alternative names (like past names or alternative versions – with and without initials for instance).
- Change your CV/resume to reflect the new name. I personally opted to add a set of parenthesis before my publications indicating the name change (i.e formerly Aspen Russell). I left all of my prior publications with the old name and add the new ones as they come in.
- If you have a website of any sort, this is a good time to update it as well. I had to swap domain names, which wasn’t the quickest process. Perhaps folks who don’t use their names are on to something.
- Obligatory social media reminder.

In my opinion, while careers matter, there is no substitute for feeling at home with your name.