Nicebottom.
this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
41 points (97.7% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48269 readers
412 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Your full name should be [FirstName] Mc[FirstNameFace]
 Mc
Zephyr Onomotopoeia Scintillating
I hate you
If I was changing my name I would like it short and easy to spell and by that its obvious there is not wierd. I knew a person with the last name wolf and I thought that was awesome. its wolf spelt like the animal you can say on the phone. snow seems like it would be that way. I might say snow just like it sounds as I can't think of snow like the weather or like the percipitate sounds that good.
if i was changing mine, i'd want something literally ungoogleable.. something so common it gets completely lost in the crowd.
Some of my friends just changed their last name to Rabbit. Easy, short enough, and cute
I go with shorter is better though. so one syllable better than two. With my first name Im asked what I prefer and I always respond with the one syllable version. Don't get me wrong. rabbit is still good.
What if I did Hard? Dr. Hard sounds kinda cool
your a doctor?
'); DROP TABLE Names; --
Little Bobby Tables strikes again!
臭豆腐
If it's currently a misspelling, why not use the correct spelling?
Best suggestion IMO.
Or research the history of your correctly spelled last name and see if you like any more common historical variants.
My immediate thought: the paperwork system of the world would fail. Correcting an extremely unique misspelled name (let's say it's two letters transposed) falls into that weird bucket of "close enough typos" that the OP would never recover. I'd be worried most about the financial systems screwing me over.
IMHO, best to change to something clearly different so that the paperwork world is given a clear indication of intentional change. Broadcast the intent loud and clear to force systems to change and not ignore it as "some stupid typo." $0.02
edit: sorry replied to the wrong comment my bad, meant the parent
... it is old-fashioned English--think Meredith, Esther, Olga, Gretchen...
I realize this is kind of beside the point but bear with me please. None of these names are English. Meredith is Welsh, Esther is from the Bible, Olga is Russian with a tinge of Scandinavian, and Gretchen is straight up German. Now, your actual name might be English so it is only tangentially relevant. And while you could dismiss this all as smarteassery on my part, which would be fair, I just want to impress upon you that what you think about names may not be correct. It's not a popular piece of advice in 2026 but: do your own research first before you go to the courthouse. Just confirm with the search engine of your choice that you got the right idea. Don't trust disagreed m so-called AI with this.
I wish you best of luck with your search. I'd suggest "Lee" - a common family name both in the anglosphere and a variant of a common Chinese one as well.
Ellis Island misspellings are a piece of patina of the US. I think at this point in time that makes them in themselves worth preserving. I don't mean to talk you out of your plan here, it's just fruit for thought.
I like being beside the point too. I would counter that you could see those names belonging to a regular English woman in the 19th century. I think Lee is a good idea. There are others of my father's last name who can carry it on but I won't take that filial duty on myself.
Could go with the "last name thats just a job title" like baker or smith or computer scientist
Jane Softwarearchitect
I genuinely need people to start doing this
Becca GISTech
Ronald Promptengineer
me: Is that Gretchen from marketing?
my coworker: No, that's Gretchen Marketing. She's in sales.
John Customer Success Account Manager is a handful and not something you want initialed.
John CSAM.. wait WHAT
Yea...... Amazon is weird.
load more comments
(3 replies)
For any advice post, there should be one thing that is most important: a clear description of the problem.
Otherwise, all advice is almost completely random/useless. Because maybe changing the name is the right solution, but maybe it isn't. There's no way to know.
In my opinion, there is no explanation of the problem at all here. You just say "too identifiable", however my name/lastname is probably also completely unique, yet I can't even think of a problem I would have with that.
So, what is the actual problem?
You're being excessively rigid rn
For this particular post, I don't know that there needs to be a problem to get a response. OP could have just left out all of the back story and asked for new last name ideas. I think the story just adds a little context for the sake of conversation and to help scope potential reaponses. If it is for anonymity, just go with Smith.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I knew a woman a long time ago that took the last name von Finglebum-Smythe. People would ask if it was German, or English, or whatever. She would always reply “No, it’s fictitious”
I have always loved that
fwiw family names in English come typically come from several sources. They may be place names (e.g. London), descriptions of places (e.g. Ford: a shallow place where you can cross a river), occupations (e.g. Smith), or the name of a family business (e.g. if your name is Fox, your ancestor likely owned a tavern with a name like The Fox & Whistle or something random). If it's an occupation that sounds too good to be true like King or Bishop, your ancestor was probably not royalty but served a royal estate.
Not that you need to follow any of that. Is there a Chinese ancestral name in your family you're aware of? Maybe you could get it's meaning and find a close English equivalent? I'm part Japanese myself, and Japanese family names are almost all of the descriptions of places variety. So say your name was Watanabe: a shallow place where you can cross a river. You might then choose to go with Ford as your English name? Just a thought.
It would Chen in that case but I don't want to go too Chinese with the last name because I'm not fluent in Chinese and since I'm a doctor I don't want patients to assume I can speak Chinese. I have no problem with patients using any language and we have translation services, I just don't want them to book with me and be disappointed/confused.
Don't pick your ex's name for the love of god?
Lmao I was kidding (maybe)
Skywalker, obvs
Power
or maybe Danger, although that's better as a middle name
Just something you should be aware, getting your name changed could be a royal pain in the butt and takes a long time, fair bit of money and a lot of patience. I recently went through the process and it's quite the journey. First thing you need to get is a signed paper from a judge in your state. Here are the list of things you have to do afterwards. There are some dependencies so you may not be able to get them done simultaneously. Social security card and state drivers license are the two most important and everything else comes afterwards.
- Social Security Card - Depending on your location, an appointment could take few months.
- Driver's License - In my state name change doesn't require an appointment however if you're upgrading to Real ID then it may require an appointment. Appointment could take several weeks to several months depending on your state.
- Car registrations
- Car titles - This could cost some money
- Car insurance
- Passport and Passport Card - This could take some time and may cost some money depending on your situation. https://travel.state.gov/en/passports/renew-replace/change-correct-passport.html
- Your employer
- If you own a company then there may be some paperwork to be done.
- If you are renting then you'll need to talk to your landlord or property manager
- If you own a house you might need to talk to your city
- Utility (Electricity, Gas, Internet, Mobile, etc.)
- Your healthcare provider
- Health/Life insurance
- Property insurance
- Voting registration
- Bank Accounts - This requires new drivers license as ID
- Credit Cards - Same as above.
- Investment accounts (Broker, 401K, IRA)
- Local public library card
- Memberships like AAA, Costco, AARP, etc.
EDIT: There are several more additions I just thought of.
- If you own a house or condo with home owner's association, you'll need them to update their records
- if you have children, your daycare center or school will need their emergency contact updated
EDIT: The following don't pertain to me personally so I really don't know what is involved with name change. You should to do more research to find out for sure if they pertains to you.
- If you are a certain licensed professional like doctor, lawyer, accountant, real-estate agent, electrician, plumber, etc. you may need to update those records
- Firearm registration may need to be updated
- if you are in your family member's will, those may need to be updated
Damn that is a long list. First thought is thank you for taking the time to type it out, second thought is how crazy it is that married women just quietly swallow this additional burden. Saving this comment.
"Firstname". Not your first name again, but "Firstname", to mess with people looking for a software bug that led to that being in the data.
Wouldn't a "zany" last name become just as identifiable as your current unique name?
It wouldn't have my police blotter attached to it though. I'm being jokey about it but it sucks that something I was wrongfully arrested for a decade ago is just there every time you search me. Like, I wasn't even charged, I was just arrested for a second, but since I don't do anything to get into papers that's one of the top things if you search me.
Might be worthwhile to look into SEO optimization instead of changing the name. Seems like it'll be a lot of work either way.
view more: next ›