A Bill by any other name

For a while, I've been thinking about changing my name. It's changed several times before, and I'm thinking about changing it back.

I was born with the mammoth full name of "William Wellington James John Hamilton Maurice Phillips-Godfrey". That's a first name, five middle names and a double-barrelled surname. These days, I'm "William Godfrey". No middle names and a single surname.

My grandfather was called "William Wellington Godfrey", and I have an uncle called "James". The "Phillips" part, I think, came in through my grandmother re-marrying. I have no idea who John, Hamilton or Maurice are. (Sorry guys.)

Through life, some of these middle names got snipped quite arbitarily. Forms with boxes for "full name" would only be filled as long as there was space. Most bizzarrly, my Inland Revenue card reads "WILLIAM HAMILTON GODFREY". Why they chose one in the middle and not the others, I don't know.

The reduction of my surname from "Phillips-Godfrey" to just "Godfrey" happened around when I was 10. My parents changed thier surname, and since we were minors, my sister and I acquired new surnames. My elder brothers, who were adults by then, retained thier "Phillips-Godfrey" and still go by that name today. My eldest sister had already got married by then and so had a different surname anyway.

With the loss of the "Phillips" out of my surname, there were murmerings that "Phillip" would become my sixth middle name, but nothing really came of that. It would be moot soon enough.

The silliness of all these middle names finally became too much at university. Near the end of the course, a university official and I were routinely going over some documents. We had my birth certificate and a copy of my parents name change declaration. The offical noticed that my university record had less middle names, due to an earlier truncation. He got rather upset at this. "Your certificate will have the wrong name."

That was it. Sitting in an office in Alma Street, Coventry, I made the next great decision about my name. "I don't have middle names any more. I dropped thier use a while ago."

"a while" was in fact about three seconds, but no matter. Those middle names have never really done anything for me and have only ever been the target of jokes. In the seven years since, I've not regretted it.

Fast forward to the present day. Do a Google search for "Bill Godfrey" and result number 1 isn't me, but an artist in New York and although I'm qute high up in the list, there is quite a menagerie of Bill Godfrey out there and quite frankly, I envy them all. Even the two dead guys.

So there we have it, I'd like to be unique, rather than yet another Bill Godfrey. At the top of the list is to re-adopt the surname of my birth and be "William Phillips-Godfrey". Well, I prefer "Bill" instead of "William" as an informal name, which makes "Bill Phillips-Godfrey", which doesn't quite roll off the tongue very well with that "Bill Phil" at the beginning.

So, what do you all think I should do? Drop me a line...