March 26, 2010 | reviews

Some people have been saddled with names perceived as career-limiting—- Ralph Reuben Lifshitz is more famously known as Ralph Lauren (a shrewd move in that case as he went on to marry a certain Ms Low-Beer) but as society has become more tolerant, it’s become less necessary to lop off surname vowels or ‘steins’ to mingle with polite society.

When your name is a bad punchline however, maybe a court order to change it post haste is the best course of action—perhaps to something less apt to become fodder for a barstool knee-slapper or sites such as this one.

If you’re a reporter with a scoop on a youth choir sex abuse scandal, a case could certainly be made for a nom de guerre in such an instance, say, Hortense P. Swain III or Ignatius T. Galloway.