Their name, their identity

Names represent people. But for some, birth names doesn’t accurately represent their identity. In many such cases, people may choose to pursue legal routes to changing their name.

Kelsey Chapman, assistant director of the LGBTQ Center at Purdue, said the topic of name changing is frequent conversation in the LGBTQ community, both at Purdue and broadly.

“People want to be affirmed by being called the name that they wish to go by,” Chapman said.

Name changing can go through the legal process or stay on a social level. Chapman knows people who have changed their name socially but not legally, and people who have done both.

“The big thing to know about transitioning is that there’s no one way to do it, and there’s no checklist of things,” she said. “Each person’s decision to change their name is based on their lived experiences.”

A lot of people begin with a social change, telling their close friends and family. It’s the most accessible route someone can go.

For legal name-changing, there are access barriers.

“You can legally change your name as many times as you want, but there is a fee. So there are financial barriers. There’s access barriers, like getting to the courthouse, having time to do that,” Chapman said.

The legal process can also be intimidating and confusing, she said.

One of the services the LGBTQ Center provides are consultations, where students can talk to staff members about anything. Chapman said they have students asking about the legal process several times each semester.

“Folks come in and they want to talk about the name change process. They have questions about it,” she said. “They don’t know where to start, have all of the nervousness or insecurities that you can imagine.”

Each state has different procedures. In Indiana, the petitioner must pay a filing charge of $150. The petitioner would also go to a hearing in front of a judge.

“I know a few people from Tippecanoe county that have gone to the courthouse and have had an okay experience. Marion county is where Indianapolis is located and that’s also a pretty okay one,” she said. “But with the rest of the counties in the country, it’s kind of a luck of the draw if you’re going to have an affirming judge or even a neutral judge,” she said.

Legal resources, like LGBT Project, sometimes provide a person to attend the hearing with the petitioner, not as legal counsel, but moral support, Chapman said.

“Instead of a hearing, it can feel more like an interrogation,” she said. “It can feel stressful and invalidating, like they have to defend their decision.”

Chapman’s worked with students from out of state who’ve had to abide by their home state’s laws instead of Indiana’s.

In Indiana, your name change must be published in a paper.

There is a waiver for that process, but the decision is ultimately up to the judge, Chapman said.

“There are also workarounds to kind of help out the people who feel really nervous about it,” she said. “There are no specific requirements for what type of publication and it doesn’t have to be your local paper; it can be any Indiana publication.”

Chapman’s helped students who’ve chosen to publish in small papers far from the area.

AnaBella Stegmaier, an incoming senior at Indiana University, plans to change her last name to Celaya in the fall.

“Everyone in my immediate family has that last name (Celaya) but me,” she said. “It’s because when my step dad and mom got married when I was like 10, I was like an angsty little, like, fifth grader and I was like, ‘I want to keep my name.’”

She decided to change her last name after learning it was her grandmother’s adopted parents’ last name.

“I just realized I want my name to be connected to my identity, my culture,” she said, “and obviously my family is so representative of that. I don’t want to graduate as a Stegmaier because that’s just not who I am.”

AnaBella Stegmaier is a hispanic woman and member of the LGBTQ community. All of these are important facets of her identity, she said.

“I take pride in the resilience of like, my identities, of being someone who has experience with all challenges of growing up in a low-income household. And I guess a more prominent one is my being a first-generation college student right now,” she said. “A lot of aspects of my identity create barriers for me systemically, but I am also think I’m grateful for them.”

It’s important for her to have her birth certificate, passport and ID reflect her identity, she said.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to make my name easier for people. My name is AnaBella and it’s spelled like ‘Annabella’ but obviously Spanish names (are pronounced differently),” she said.

She will begin the process in late August or early September.

“I think that was also because I’ve never been comfortable being the only brown person in a room and stuff, but as I’ve gotten older and more in touch with social justice and my education on stuff like that, I’ve just become a lot more proud of it.”