Louise writes:<\/p>\n
I’m not sure if you’ll answer my question as mine isn’t a baby name one, but as all the babies that people name eventually grow up and have to use the chosen name on a daily basis I thought my predicament might be an interesting one.<\/p>\n
My parents named me Emily Louise, but always intended to use Louise as they preferred that order with my surname (which sounds like Barvee but with an H). It seems like every second female I meet in their 20s has the middle name Louise (I’m 24), but never as the chosen name. I do not like the name Louise- to me it sounds whiney, with the drawn-out ‘eeze’ sound at the end, and as a child I was teased as Lou sounds like loo (toilet in the UK, where I grew up), though I have gotten over that now and quite like Lou. However, I much prefer Emily, but after 24 years of using Louise do you think it is a good idea to change? The double ‘y’ sound of Emily with with my surname doesn’t sounds so great, though obviously most of the time I’d just be using Emily. I currently work in France, where both names are known and used (though Louise is a much rarer older person’s name, like Joan or Felicity). How would I convince my friends and in particular, my family, to use it? Is it a silly idea to try and change it this late in life, or would I always be known as ‘Emily-who-used-to-be-Louise’?. So should I change it, or learn to like my name? (and if the latter, maybe your commentators can convince me to like it!).<\/p>\n
Even if you don’t use my email, let this be a warning to parents to use the child’s legal first name- it’s so frustrating to correct doctors, landlords etc., and explain every time someone asks me what my middle name is!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I think if you would prefer to be called Emily, it will work out just fine to make the switch. There will be a bit of a wearying hurdle to get over (the announcement, the explanations, the corrections, the reminders), plus a few lingering issues (relatives and friends who can’t\/won’t change), but that it will work out in the long run. It certainly helps on all levels that Emily is in fact your first name. And I think Emily works fine with your surname.<\/p>\n
People who already know and love you (family and good friends) will likely take the longest to adjust, and some of them might never change over. It’ll be a little like the grown men named James who can’t get their relatives and old friends to stop calling them Jimmy. This would be a good thing to imagine in advance and see if you can predict how annoyed you’d be by it: would it drive you crazy, or are you okay with having a subset of people who always call you Louise or Louise-I-mean-Emily-sorry-you’re-just-always-Louise-to-me? I wonder if it would help to go by Emily Louise for awhile. (In fact, I love the sound of that; it might be another possibility to consider for permanent usage.)<\/p>\n
I don’t think it’s silly to change it at this stage of life, and in fact, age 24 seems just about perfect: you’re old enough to be fairly confident this is what you want to do, but young enough that you aren’t yet settled in for the long haul. There will still be lots of people you’ll meet who, if you switch now, will have always known you as Emily. Many people change names in similar ways at right around the same age you are now, choosing to go by Liz instead of Beth, or by Elizabeth instead of Beth, or by John instead of whatever nickname was used to tell him apart from his father John and grandfather John. And because Emily is your legal first name already, the explanation is relatively easy.<\/p>\n
I do love the name Louise, and would be happy to spend some time telling you how much I love it (I do, I love it, I think it’s completely darling and so fun to say)—but if you don’t love it at 24, I’d say you’ve put in a good effort and can love it as your middle name instead. And I love the name Emily, too: it was high on my list for my daughter’s name.<\/p>\n
I’m hoping commenters will have anecdotes about changing their own names in this way (from a middle name to a first name, or from one nickname to a full name or to another nickname) and how it went.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> Louise writes:<\/p>\n
Thank you so much for including my question! I was encouraged my the postive response from the commentators, so I changed my name on facebook for a bit and told my family and friends I was thinking of using Emily. Everyone (including my parents), was absolutely fine with it, which really surprised me! However, in the end I realised that though I don’t love my name I feel no connection whatsoever with Emily, and I would miss all the (nice) nicknames that I have that come from Louise. After 24 years of identifying with one name it would feel like becoming a different person to suddenly switch- Emily just doesn’t feel like ‘me’. Forms and the like will continue to be frustrating, but I’ve managed so far. So thank you to you and the lovely commentators who encouraged me to switch, but I am going to stick with Louise, and am determined to learn to like it!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Louise writes: I’m not sure if you’ll answer my question as mine isn’t a baby name one, but as all the babies that people name eventually grow up and have to use the chosen name on a daily basis I thought my predicament might be an interesting one. My parents named me Emily Louise, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-28q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8210"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8247,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8210\/revisions\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}