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With a very few exceptions of people I know from my childhood, most people don't know that my name has "officially" changed this year.
Masaki Okamoto is my "real name" which now is registered, but the Masaki part is something I came up with myself.
The first name my parents gave me was Masao. From a Japanese' perspective, it looks a little outdated.
This is kind of hard to explain, but Japanese names seem to be a lot more time-sensitive than English names. For instance, "John" has been a very good name forever and it will probably stay so for a long time from now on too, but Taro or Kojiro or Ryunosuke, which used to be great names for a given period of time respectively, are all out of fashion now. Completely.
A guy's name which ends with "o" was pretty overused by older generations, and what made it worse was that the Chinese character which was assigned to the "o" was very old-fashioned.
Therefore, I kept thinking I didn't like my name, and luckily I got a permission from the family court, to officially change it to Masaki, this June.
To explain the "officially" part, I started using this Masaki name in 2000. Since then I had been Masaki among friends and colleagues, and Masao for public offices (like the city office or banks) for almost 8 years.
For me the year 2000 was when my job as an employee in a record company ended and I started to work as a freelance, doing translation for CDs. (I don't do this job anymore.)
I was convinced that having a not-cool name was a disadvantage to be a successful freelancer, so I started to call myself Masaki Okamoto then. It's not a super-cool name, but it's at least not out-fashioned. And it's close enough to the former name to feel easy.
So that way my life with two Japanese names (besides Masa Oka) began. And somewhere along the path I came to know that if you have used certain name for a long enough time, you can make it your real name.
All you need to do is to keep the documents which can prove that you actually have been using that name, such as posted materials or payment notices, and then apply at the family court.
I searched on the web to learn how long was "long enough", and it seemed that about 7 years would be. So I waited a little longer and applied after 8 years.
I had quite a lot of documents to show from the 8 years, but surprisingly I only had to attach only a little portion of them. In the "reason you want to change your name" column of the application form, I wrote something like "It'll be of advantage for my career to have a name which is more likely to draw esthetic interest, and this name is already better known in my friends' circles."
The judge was a woman. I'm not sure if this led to the smooth giving of permission, but I think that if I was encountered by a real hard right-wing male judge or somebody, I'd perhaps face difficulty.
I took the permission to the city office and changed my register, called my brother and told him about it, and talked about it when I went home in Wakayama lately. I have only told one person in terms of my childhood friends, but sooner or later they'll know it, I think.
9:36 AM
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