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This is going to be a hard post to post by virtue of the fact that it deals directly with my name, which I'm not so in to posting. So for the sake of the post, let's say that my name is...Mildred.

Mildred is what I've always gone by, however, that's not my legal name. My legal name is something like Anastasia Claire Bentley, however, I've never gone by Anastasia.

What I'd really like to do is change my name. I've thought about changing it to 'Mildred Anastasia Claire Bentley', but that's pretty long. So I've thought about eliminating either 'Anastasia' or 'Claire' and going by 'Mildred Claire Bentley'. Then there's the factor of people always misspelling and mispronouncing 'Mildred', so I'd like to simplify that to just 'Milly'. Then the name that I end up with is 'Milly Claire Bentley'.

What's the problem with that?

Well, extracting 'Anastasia' dishonors (maybe?) the person for whom I was given that name, though I don't think she'd care.

Extracting 'Claire' dishonors my grandmother.

But one of them has got to go.

Let's say I were to go with 'Milly Claire Bentley'--the name as it actually exists implies too much of an ethnic background that I have no part of, and while I don't want to dishonor my parents, I don't exactly want to be identified as being part of a culture that I am not, in fact, a part of.


So what do I change my name to, in order to a) simplify it and b) honor a heritage that I feel 'OK' honoring?

It's come across my mind to change my name to something completely arbitrary, in which case I would change it to 'Milly Diesel Bladesnshire'--'Diesel Bladenshire' being what I would actually change it to, and not a pseudonym.

I also might be WAY over thinking this.

Maybe I should ask my parents.