Names Are Tools
Online, you will often hear the question "What is your real name?" whether it is asked to you or someone else. This made me kind of think "What really is a real name?". People could give different answers to this question. The most common answer to this question I hear is that your real name is what is on your birth certificate. There are problems with this answer. The first problem I noticed is that not everyone has a birth certificate. What about the probably millions of people without one or all the people in the past that never had a birth certificate? If a birth certificate is what determines what your 'real' name is, then all these people would in truth, have no name. The truth about birth certificates (and pretty much all 'official' documents) is that they are just pieces of paper that say something is true. They are only 'true' because people believe they are. This also applies to legal names. A legal name is just what a government says your name is and has rules you must obey and a format to follow in order for the name to be accepted by them. Depending on where you live, even if you legally change your name, you must use the firstname lastname format, no exceptions. Even if you can remove your lastname and only have a firstname, legally, you probably can't use a name format different than the firstname lastname format. Due to these arbitrary rules, I can't consider a legal name to be a 'real' name. You also have to essentially ask the government to approve your name change, which is just stupid. Someone shouldn't have to ask permission to change what is really just a word used to identify them and effects only them.
Thinking about all this made me realize names are just tools used to identify something. They are a construct with no real, objective truth to what someone's 'real' name is. You can define a real name as something but there will always be problems with the definition like what I stated earlier. The closest thing to a 'real' name, I believe, is just what you honestly think your name is. If names are just a tool used for identification and are essentially made up, then the possessor of that made up tool that is a name should have the control over what their name is, no one else.
There is also the issue of translation and transliteration. Names can be different depending on the language or writing system. In English, if we say the name of someone whose name in their native language contains sounds not present in English or uses a writing system that can't accurately transliterate into Latin script, is their name in English just incorrect? If they have a real name, then it's almost impossible for certain languages to say it and writing systems to write it. You would likely never even be able to say or even write their 'real' name and 'official' documents and such in certain countries could technically be incorrect posing a problem if you think government documents determine a person's name.
Written 2022-3-11 Published 2022-4-1