While you have a lot of flexibility in choosing your new name, there are certain restrictions that you want to be aware of. For instance, you may not choose a name which has a fraudulent meaning. Specifically, choosing a name with the intent to further some illegal activity, such as to avoid debt, evade the law, or avoid being included in pending litigation is prohibited. Additionally, changing your name to one which capitalizes on the existing name of a famous person, or other similar name changes which would infringe on the rights of others are illegal. You may not choose names that are intentionally confusing.

Additionally, you may not choose a name that is a racial slur, a fighting word, or is threatening or obscene.

In order to legally implement your new name, you need to change it as such on different documents. As a threshold, you should check with the institutions and people in your life and determine what special rules and/or protocol they have in place for the name-change situation.

Assuming you have legally changed your name, many institutions will, and should, require some sort of documentation to make the name change official in their records. Different institutions may have different rules, so be sure that you check with each one to find out what their procedures are.

Additionally, you want to change the name on your driver's license and your Social Security Card, in that order. Once these initial forms of identification contain your new name, other forms will be easier to change. You also need to remember to notify the following of your name change: friends and family, employers, schools, Post Office, Department of Motor Vehicles, Social Security Administration, Department of Records or Vital Statistics (issuers of birth certificates), banks and other financial institutions, creditors and debtors, telephone and utility companies, State taxing authority, Insurance agencies, Registrar of Voters, Passport office, Public Assistance (welfare) office, and Veterans Administration.

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