hey fedi,

has anyone here successfully changed their last name in Germany on the reason that the relationship with their parents is very broken and they need a new one to distance themselves from their parents?

i would really like to do that and want to see if anyone else did something similar

@quinn It can cost up to 1000 EUR in bureaucracy costs (and can even denied by your city hall - and you need to present a good reason, if no marriage/divorce/adoption) - I know a mutual from my school days was successful, since her grandfather was a close relative to a higher-up nazi and she wanted to break ties to that cursed family name - and took her mother's maiden name.
@tenkoman i'm more specifically looking for people whose good reason was a severely broken relationship with their parents which caused mental health issues - i can likely get a doctor's note confirming this
@quinn @tenkoman Yeah, legally, that's a bit of a toughie, since there's no explicit sample case for this in the regulation; you'd either have to scout out the EWMA to check if they're amenable to this, or else probably prepare for legal debate.
(This stems mainly from the fact that people associated with e.g. murderers that don't have a discernible impact on their life because of that name can't change their name only to "distance" themselves.)
@quinn @tenkoman Mental health might really be the lynchpin to get that argued if it should come to court.
@quinn Not myself, but a person I knew a few years back. He did just that for the same reason successfully, so at least I can tell you to go for it.

@quinn Namensänderungen sind in Deutschland ziemlich restriktiv, insbesondere was Nachnamen angeht, aber eine Sache die vielleicht helfen kann ist wenn dein Nachname extrem häufig ist (Müller, Meier, Schmidt, Schulze, …) und damit einen sogenannten Sammelnamen darstellt: In dem Fall hast du einen Rechtsanspruch auf einen Namen der den Sinn eines Nachnamens nicht dermaßen stark untergräbt.

Ein anderer Grund, mit dem du aber wahrscheinlich nur die Schreibweise geändert bekommen kannst ist falls dein Name Sonderzeichen (inklusive Umlaute und Eszett) enthält und du dich auf Probleme bei Reisen berufst, da in dem Fall der Name im Pass nicht mit dem Maschinenlesbaren Namen übereinstimmt, was in der Vergangenheit schon zu Problemen geführt hat.

@quinn I know someone who did that. He changed his name, but it was a whole process including psychological evaluation. Also, it was neither cheap nor quick.
But it is doable, if needed.

@quinn after now two people tagged me here after my adhd brain forgot the first time

I have changed my name to winter, for that I had a letter from a psychologist attesting that my father and family as a whole have hurt me and that my then last name causes me significantly distress (not that wording precisely but the spirit), together with a form where I had to state the reason for the change myself I wrote like 1.5 pages describing how my family traumatized me and that my chosen last name is one I've been using for years and my entire environment knows me only by this name, and that the change would significantly improve my life

Then after I handed that in with a bit extra stuff like birth certificate and calling them repeatedly after 3 months bc they forgot to process it, and 300eur, I became winter officially

And when I made my new ID I only wrote my new name in, so I don't even have "born as x" on it (don't know how legal that was but fuck em)

@quinn winter has no relation to anyone in my family tree, I completely picked that on my own years ago
@quinn so overall it was relatively easy for me after I got to twist my therapists arm and had luck with the person processing it

@MiaWinter thanks for the response, i had multiple people (some also in private) respond to me that it was rather unproblematic with a letter from a therapist, this gives me a lot of hope!

i'll likely ask both a therapist and my psychiatrist for a letter, and i guess that should work then!

@quinn Germany is very stupid with all its weird name laws and it's requirement for psychiatrists, but once you have the letter thankfully it's rare that people make trouble