As a professional:
My name is an important identification tool, of course. There is a reason that firms are named Rodriguez & Gimbert or Jami Lowry & Associates, etc. In the practice of law names are how clients recognize us and are therefore of the utmost importance. I’ve already begun building a reputation for myself in this community. People come in my office and ask for me – wait for it – by Name. DA’s from other counties call the partners at my firm and tell the partners “confine Rocio Hernandez to Brazos County – the prosecutors have had enough from her” ;)
Legal representation is a service and not a product. If you buy a brand new Honda, you know what you’re getting: A Honda is a Honda is a Honda. I would expect that the car itself won’t vary from one dealership to another. Instead I’d expect the price, warranty, servicing offered, etc. is what will make the difference. All that to say that in other businesses and individual’s name is less important. I assume firms like to have equal caliber attorneys throughout so they can sell the firm itself. But in a county with 130,000 people there are so few firms of 3 or more attorneys, so we market ourselves as individuals more than as a firm.
Now comes the caveat. If you’re that damn good at what you do, people will learn your new name. It might take some effort on my part to get everyone to connect Rocio Hernandez to Rocio Newname but I doubt it would prevent new clients from walking into the office looking for me, courts from appointing me to cases, attorneys from trembling in their boots when I walk in as opposing counsel ;)etc. A change of name would only affect my practice to a limited extent and probably only temporarily. I don’t doubt that a change of Buildings might have a greater effect than a name change…
That said, I still make an effort to make sure that I’m known by my first name in this community. Two things: One – I’m lucky enough to have a rare enough name that I can be identified based solely on my first name. (Thanks parents for naming me Rocio!) I don’t have any problem with telling clients “you can call me Rocio” or just introducing myself as Rocio (while handing them my card which includes my last name…). I can make the effort now to focus people in on my first name. Two – there is another attorney in town named Hernandez – a male who has been practicing law here a looong time. It’s probably better for me that people don’t associate me with Mr. Hernandez…
As a daughter, wife, mother:
I’m very proud to be a Hernandez. My parents and sisters are wonderful people and I loved sharing a name with them. But, Elisa and Susana now have beautiful new last names which they share with their New families. It doesn’t lessen our bond or make us any less of a family than we were before – of course. People come into my office and pay good money to have children’s names changed to dissociate them from a loser or associate them with a winner. They spend good money on issuing citations by publication and appointments of attorney ad litem to have children’s names changed to that of their new family. Obviously, to those people at least, name means a connection with the rest of the family.
Though the thought of changing my name – especially to something harder to pronounce than Hernandez – doesn’t particularly appeal to me, I do want to share a name with my new family when the time comes. The thought of having children named FirstName Lastname-Otherlastname doesn’t appeal to me. For how many generations can that feasibly continue? Would their children triple or quadruple hyphenate? I’d like to share a name with my husband. Perhaps we could change his and have Hernandez babies ;)
Proposed solution to this conundrum:
My family is Salvadoran. Following the tradition practiced by my family, my name would change from
Rocio Esmeralda Hernandez Larios
to
Rocio Esmeralda Newname Hernandez.
I’d lose my mom’s maiden name (Larios) but keep my own maiden name. How cool is that? It doesn’t change the fact that most people are just known by one last name but it’s an interesting way of doing things nonetheless. I just hope Rocio Newname Hernandez fits nicely on the business card J
