Changing names!

Dad aged 12 in Hamilton, New Zealand
with his favourite dogs. This is William
Davis

William Davis in Wellington, New Zealand in 1939 prior to sailing to Cairo via Fremantle
 

As we knew him and loved him.
Dad as Leonard Brown in Coolgardie, 1959
and father of six children all with the surname Brown

Dad at his job as crane driver at Ulyru in central Northern Territory in the 1980s

A writer Jayne Fordham takes on her rightful name! How we mere humans can stuff things up sometimes with our name changes. For example, take my beautiful stepfather, a man in a million and loved by all. For years we knew him as Leonard Brown and loved him. then the secret was let out, his birth name was William Davis. That rocked everybody so how come this name change? Well, he was in the New Zealand fusiliers at the outbreak of WWII, as William Davis of course, and set sail from Wellington bound for Cairo via Fremantle.William Davis' last journey. He and a another mate went to Armadale for they were invited to a party. They caught the trains of course, but someone forgot to tell them that the trains didn't run at night. Ohhh crumbs. So the ship sailed at 5am in the morning without them. The pair of them scarpered south to where Dad had a relative on a farm, Leonard Brassel. That's where the name change took place and Brownie as his friends called him, took on a new identity; Le4onard after his uncle and Brown because it was a common name. Dad met Mum in Meekatharra where he was droving sheep for the army. Yes, he joined the Western Australian Army in 1942 and they new of his name change and advised him to keep the Brown, There you go. Mum, having left her first husband and with one kid and a half a kid on  its way, was hooked. They had six children giving a total of eight! And now the interesting part again. Both those children of the first husband all grew up as Browns until it was found out in their adult years that their names were actually O'Grady. So their school and work records were all in Brown  as welll as one marriage. My! So we took on our birth name of O'Grady, having had to legalise them proper like. Life wasn't meant to be easy, but somehow....Quite a number of members of our family have had different names to confuse themselves and everybody even further. So never mind Jayne, I mean Lauren, its up to us to set the record straight - eventually!

I’m having a name change-Jayne Fordham becomes Lauren Murphy- just to be confusing! by The Australian Bookshelf

Agh! I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’m sorry to be a pain in the butt, but the time has come for me to revert back to my real name, Lauren.

When I first adopted the pseudonym Jayne Fordham, (Jayne is my middle name and then I just made up Fordham) it was for online purposes. I started blogging about books online and then joining up to a range of social media sites and I was cautious about using my real name. Though I did make it clear I was using a pseudonym.

Why did I use a pen name? Because I’m a psychologist during my day job and I am aligned with various registration bodies, I work for the Health department and I work with people who are dealing with sensitive issues. I purely adopted a pseudonym for confidentiality purposes. Though I’m sure savvy online researchers could make the link to my real name somewhere, I didn’t particularly want to make it easy. Then, I started self-publishing and it was only natural for me to continue using my pen name.

So what’s the problem?

Hmm. It seems my online world is slowly merging with the real world. I recently attended a convention and met a bunch of people whom I’ve spoken to online, they know me as Jayne and greeted me by this name. This is perfectly okay because that’s the name I’ve put out there.

But I realised I just don’t feel like a Jayne and I’ve met people whom I’ve chatted online with for quite some time who were quite surprised when they met me. When I initially chose the pseudonym, my mum told me Jayne Fordham sounded like an old person’s name! Even though she gave me Jayne as a middle name!

For the most part, my friends and family look at me like I have three heads when I say I write under a pseudonym, probably because they don’t completely understand the nature of my work. But I’ve developed an online presence over the past 2 years and I’m starting to make progress with my writing and putting feelers out for publication so I feel like now is a better time than any to revert back to my real first name, Lauren, and to continue using a pseudo- surname.

Hence…

Lauren Murphy!

I feel much more comfortable using my real first name and the surname is much more closely linked to my family history which sits far better with me than a name I made up on the spur of the moment when I created my book blog.

As a reader, I can see how annoying and confusing pseudonyms can sometimes be, so I'm sorry!

I’m still the same person; I haven’t made up anything else about myself- just to put the record straight! It’s just now I get to use my real name! YAY

How will this affect my future written work?

I intend to publish any future writing under Lauren Murphy.

The only exception will be the continuation of the Elite series, which I will continue to publish under Jayne Fordham- because it would be a nightmare to change the name halfway through the series.

And if you still call me Jayne by accident, i won't hold it against you!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.