Bdtyk

I am a senior undergraduate about to publish my first academic paper, and have been thinking about taking an academic pseudonym to make myself easier to identify.

My full name is shared by at least three famous people (including one celebrity and one international athlete), and at least two people inside academia (one of whom works in my field). This is my major reason for wanting to change. In modern academia, it seems online identity/SEO is becoming increasingly important, and I don't want to have to compete for namespace with other people, who are:

1. more famous than I'll likely ever be; and


2. already have established careers and goodwill under that name.

Basically, it seems like it could be a real hindrance when trying to get my career off the ground.

I am quite attached to my first name, so I'm thinking about changing my last name only to an ancient variant of it. It's a similar name, but much less common, and it couldn't be mistaken as a misspelling of my real name (think Busher vs Bouchier, or Lombard vs Lambert). I can't find evidence of anyone online using that name, so it seems to solve all the problems mentioned above.

I hope to continue into academia and become a professor, in which case I would publish and be known professionally under the new name.
I'd rather not legally change my name, or have to change my name within my personal life, so it would be a situation of having separate professional and personal names. In the event I don't succeed/continue into academia, I could always just revert to my real name (unlikely that my published work will be relevant anyhow).

I'd like to get advice from you all, especially those of you that use a pseudonym in your academic work. A couple questions I have:

1. Does this seem like a worthwhile idea?


2. Could there be any issues with having different legal and professional names in a university IT system?


3. Should I change my undergrad enrolment to be under my new academic name? How about when applying to postgrad/PhD programs?


4. If I don't do (3), could/should I get degrees reprinted (once I have an established career) under my academic name, rather than my personal name?


5. Are there any hairy issues that could arise from this, which I might not have considered?

Thanks!

Updated based on the comments to the original answers.

Complementary to your own suggestions and the ones in the other answers, you could consider creating an ORCID (or of course any other unique researcher/author ID) and using it in all publications. The benefits here:

• By adding a unique identifier to your name, the name collisions can be resolved.


• If your change your name at a certain point (e.g., if you decide to change your name as you suggested in the question), the ID will remain the same. Therefore, you even might be able to postpone the decision whether to change your name.


• Since you mention online identity and SEO: At least ORCID comes with a profile web site (I am not familiar with other ID systems), where you can add your personal information and even maintain a list of your publications. Usually, a link to this profile is added to the publication, so readers can follow it. As to search engine optimization, I am not expert here but I would guess that the outcome of those algorithms improves if there is a unique ID that groups your contributions together.

Of course, all those ID systems are quite recent and might not be accepted (yet) by the journals and/or researchers in your field. Nevertheless, I would give it a try since it comes at no cost (which I presume won't be the case for changing legal documents).

If you have a middle name, then you could add a hyphen to derive a new name, e.g., Alpha Bravo Charlie could become Alpha Bravo-Charlie.

Does this seem like a worthwhile idea?

Yes

Could there be any issues with having different legal and professional names in a university IT system?

Yes, but this will vary university to university. An obvious problem might be the assignment of email addresses, e.g., Alpha.Bravo@university.edu, but this can be resolved by a polite email.

Should I change my undergrad enrolment to be under my new academic name?

This mightn't be possible, you'd need to justify (perhaps legally) a reason (which you cannot legally prove).

How about when applying to postgrad/PhD programs?

You need to be careful: Don't commit fraud. Being employed under a non-legal name is possibly illegal, publishing under a non-legal name is not.

could/should I get degrees reprinted (once I have an established career) under my academic name, rather than my personal name?

Some institutes may question a certificate in the "wrong" name, others won't, many won't check.

Are there any hairy issues that could arise from this, which I might not have considered?

You might inadvertently commit fraud...

A former colleague has effectively swapped their middle and family names for publishing purposes (I believe their given middle name is also in some way inherited). The now surname is (for native English-speakers) simpler and more natural to spell and pronounce than the legal one, and they use the initial of the legal surname as a middle initial. The new name is simultaneously academically unique and intuitive for people from many cultures (working in English).

Applying this to Dorothy Hodgkin as an example would give Dorothy H.Crowfoot.

This is a slightly bigger change than the one you propose, and so far seems to work well.

Devil's advocate here.

I personally consider it a worthwhile idea, especially if you could add your middle name somewhere (as opposed to using a different last name). It would be a minor change in publications (just adding one letter), and it would still be easy to see how it refers to you.

However, this could be an issue for any publications you published before, and as you mentioned, degrees and enrollment, that you probably cannot change easily without legal proof (depending on your country).

Look at chinese researchers though, a lot of them have identical first name and last name, and they still end up publishing with these names. I see several reasons not to change the name: first, because they are identified usually by the academy they work in, which pretty much always goes with the author's name on a paper. Second, when you apply somewhere, or contact someone, if they are interested to look into you, they can make the effort to add one extra word and find you, for example by specifying your field of expertise, or again, your academy. For other people who happened to search for you on their own, the same answer is pretty much the same. If they look for you, they can make that extra effort (and if they work/look a lot into your field, their google history may be biased and will most likely already gets your result ahead).

One option you may have is changing your name legally. This would avoid some of the complications you see. This is the time to do it, before you graduate and have a diploma under the current name.

As far as I know, the only reason to avoid using another name legally is that you can, in some circumstances be accused of fraud, but those circumstances are not the ones here since you don't have a fraudulent purpose.

I have something of a similar problem. I don't carry my birth name, for complicated reasons, but wish that I did. But once I graduated college it always seemed too late to change.

However, if you simply use a pseudonym, it will be learned sooner or later. That might complicate things or not, so think about that. If people start referring to you under both names interchangeably, others will be confused. You will eventually want a passport if you don't already have one. For this you need to use your legal name, and so, when you travel to international conferences, it will normally be under that name (a minor obstacle, of course).

And maybe some other famous athlete or academic will come along with your newly chosen name in any case. I share names with both famous athletes and academics, by the way. It has never been an issue, but in my case the fields of study are different. I've only ever gotten one email that should have gone to the other academic. A bit humorous, that.

Finally, your difficulty in starting out a career will be determined by far more fundamental things, I predict. As such, there is probably little downside in just leaving it as it is, using your current name.