Judicial Procedures for a Change–of–Name in The United States

Abstract

THE ESSENTIAL FREEDOMS which citizens of the United States enjoy today include one which is often overlooked because, like most of our other rights, it is so frequently taken for granted. Yet we, in America, perhaps possess the freedom, alone of all the peoples of the world, to change the names we were given at birth. Yet, as shall subsequently be made clear in this paper, it is not an absolute guarantee, any more than the inalienable rights of speech and assembly are to be regarded as without exception. For limitations are placed on all of our freedoms to insure that freedom for one may not deny the equally valid rights of others. This paper, part of a longer study of the practice of namechanging in the United States, treats of the methods by which a change-of-name may be effected in a court of law. After a brief account of the statutory foundations of common law and judicial procedures and a description of the judicial process itself, attention be focused on the grounds legitimate or otherwise for the approval and denial of court petitions and some of the more memorable legal decisions in the past forty years on the right of assumption of famous names. * The Legal Basis for N ame-Ohanging In most states of the Union, an individual has the common law right to adopt any name he chooses and once he has used and become generally kno,vn by it, it will constitute his legal name just as much as if he had borne it from birth.1 This may be broadly interpreted to include the right of any individual to change his name without application to the