What’s in a name? A reputation? I honour to your family? A word that you might not even like? For me there’s two of those things, a reputation and a word I don’t like.

Ever since I was 12 years old I’ve wanted to change my second name, I hate it. It’s a symbol of someone who I’d rather not talk about. I was told by my mother that it was very difficult to change your name without permission from both parents, and seeing as I wasn’t talking to one of them, it made it all even harder. But – I was researching it the other day and now that I’m 16, I can legally change my name for a nice sum of £33.

How? Well simple: deed poll. Deed polls are used nearly everyday to change peoples names, either for proper reasons such as mine or for fun, for example someone has changed their name in the past to things such as “Huggy Bear”, “Hong Kong Phooey” and “Jo Jo magicspacemonkey”.

So! From now one my name is not Rory Clapham. My full name is now, officially, Rori Dexter Leyum Parkes-Gilchrist, but you can call me Rori Gilchrist for short. Some might want an explanation as to my names, so:

1. Rori – I like it better with an i, makes me a bit more unique
2. Dexter – A middle name my mum agreed to a long time ago
3. Leyum – My best friends name, he’s changed his middle name to Rori, too
4. Parkes – My step dad’s name – I’m the only one who can continue the name Parkes for him.
5. Gilchrist – My grandparents name – I’m the only one who can continue the name Gilchrist for them.

Just on a side note – I will change the website, just give me a bit of time please. So what do you think? What’s in a name? What would you change your name to if you could?