Get a Different Name Day

What the day is

Get a Different Name Day is observed on February 13. For one day, you use a different name: a nickname, a middle name, or something invented entirely.

It is a novelty observance, and the joke has a serious edge. A first name is one of the few things about a person chosen entirely by somebody else, usually before that person had any characteristics to be named for.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented, and no founder or sponsoring organization is reliably known.

Changing a name is genuinely common, and the reasons are varied: marriage and divorce, migration and anglicization, religious conversion, gender transition, professional reinvention, or simply disliking what was chosen. In most common-law jurisdictions a person may use a different name without any legal process at all, provided it is not for fraud, though changing it on official documents requires a formal step. Many people go through life with a legal name that almost nobody uses.

Naming conventions themselves are far less universal than English speakers tend to assume. Patronymic systems build the surname from the father's given name; Icelandic names work this way still. Many cultures place the family name first. Some traditions give names that change at stages of life. The idea of a fixed, permanent, government-registered pair of names is a relatively modern administrative convenience.

How to take part

• Pick one and commit for the day. Half-committing produces confusion rather than comedy.
• Warn people who need to reach you, and keep your real name on anything official.
• Use your middle name if you have never given it a run. Plenty of people discover they prefer it.
• Ask colleagues and friends whether their name is shortened, anglicized or simply mispronounced, and then learn the correct version. This is the most useful possible outcome of the day.
• Look up what your own name means and where it came from.

A note of proportion: for people who have changed names for serious reasons, being called the right one is not a game. The day is best kept as a joke about your own name rather than anyone else's.