I’m going through an interesting question in my mind at the moment.
I’ve just returned from getting married and I’m changing my last name in “real life”. That is a pain in itself (you’d think banks had never had to deal with this before) but it presents me with an interestion situation online. I’ve been active on the web since 1995 and therefore have a lot of “google love” under my name. I am the only “Cheryl Lead” that I know of and so the majority of matches for my name are for me and my professional career. Some not so professional matches as well but the good far outweigh the bad.
So I don’t even know how to go about changing my name and my online persona. It wouldn’t be great if a potential client googled my new name to find out I’m a bible study teacher in Syracuese NY. And how can I say that I am a web professional when my (new) name doesn’t even appear anywhere, on any website? Do I start again from the beginning in building my online presence or do I keep my old name online and just have my new name for bank accounts and official documents?
I’d love to hear any thoughts or ideas.
This post is tagged under: random thoughts
Congratulations on your marriage :) Would going down the hyphen path be out of the question? You could have name like Cheryl Lead-MarriedName for professional purposes and anyone googling one surname or the other would be bound to find you. Consider the hyphened name a “screen name” rather than an official name.
Why don’t you just stick to Chezza and that covers both :)
Well one way to think of it is toYou can consider “Cheryl Lead” to be your “professional name” and stick with it in all professional activities.
oops, that wasn’t meant to submit. weird. Full comment was meant to be…
Well one way to think of it is to consider “Cheryl Lead” to be your “professional name” and stick with it for professional activities. Many people do this as it preserves the value of the profile they’ve built. It also provides a clear line between personal and professional. To some small extent it asserts that your professional skills and focus are not affected by your marital status. Depends if you buy into that or not ;)
Traditionalists might think you’re being hard-nosed, but most people should be able to accept it. After all these days we wear different identities according to context - nicks, handles, aliases… people are getting used to their friends and associates being known by different names.
Personally I think it’s entirely reasonable to keep your maiden name in your professional life (my sister did it).
Or you might decide that your identity in all facets of life should match; or it could be a plain and simple desire to have people use your new name. You don’t have to justify this one :)
In any case, screw Google. People should be able to work out which search results ACTUALLY relate to you; and if you change your name your ranking will go up for the new name as well.
All else aside, in a perfect world how do you want to introduce yourself/be introduced at professional events? Go with that :)
Or you can do one of those hyphenated names, Cheryl Lead- ? :)
I had angle brackets which were swallowed whole in the previous comment. Read as: “Cheryl Lead-newSurname”