What’s In a Name? : . . . For Robin Hood and Others Who Change Theirs, It Was Years of Bad Jokes and Mangled Spellings

Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener

That is what I’d truly like to be

‘cause if I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener

Everyone would be in love with me.

--1965 Oscar Mayer & Co., Inc.

Oscar Mayer did nothing for Ken Weiner’s self-esteem.

As a kid on the streets of Brooklyn, Weiner cringed each time he heard the company’s catchy TV jingle. His friends never let him forget that, despite the transposed vowels, his name sounded like a hot dog.

Years later, his unfortunate surname took on even crueler associations: He was always a dork. A dweeb.

A real Weeeener.

Bruce Reck had also heard the jokes. His cronies around Costa Mesa called him “Nervous” for short. People even asked if he was going to name his first child, Otto.

Russian-born Yelena Pokryshevsky had a stickier problem. After 13 years as an American citizen, the Cal State Northridge student not only grew tired of spelling out her name, she was also weary of explaining where she was from.

Recently, the three Southland residents put a stop to all the zingers, stingers, one-liners or confusion that caused so much grief. Like some 10,000 other Los Angeles County residents each year, they changed their names.

Now, Kenneth Scott Weiner is Kenneth W. Scott. Bruce Reck is Bruce Todd. And Yelena Pokryshevsky has become Lena Parnell.

“I just got so tired of always spelling my name,” explains Parnell, of Encino. “None of my teachers could ever pronounce it. My son is 2 1/2. And I thought ‘Gosh, he’s going to have the same problem with that last name as I’ve had. And he was born here.’ I just didn’t want him always having to explain what country he was from.”

The Hollywood crowd, of course, is famous for new and improved stage names. Remember the late Muzyad Yakhoob, who starred in the ‘50s television comedy “Make Room for Daddy”? Or Alphonso D’Abruzzo as that cut-up doctor Hawkeye Pierce in “MASH”? You probably think they were always known as Danny Thomas and Alan Alda. And Jacob Cohen? He still doesn’t get any respect--even after changing his name to Rodney Dangerfield.

But there are legions of local residents who probably will never see their names on any cineplex marquee, folks whose new identities are no more famous than their old ones.

Take Khang Vuong. He’s now Tyrone Vuong. Lucky Barbara Lotto became Barbara Alexander. Jay Getzoff is now Jay Stevens.

A national expert estimates that one in five surname switches nationwide occur here, making Southern California the country’s name-change capital.

The process is so simple most people don’t even bother to hire an attorney. For about $300--including court fees and miscellaneous charges for copies and parking--people like Weiner, Reck and Pokryshevsky quietly solve their curious brand of identity crisis.

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Every Friday, scores of anxious Southern Californians show up at Room 208 of the Superior Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles--one of 10 county name-change locales--to try on their new identities.

Each has already filed a $182 fee to petition the court, and published--once a week for four weeks--an announcement in a local newspaper alerting possible creditors to both old and new identities.

Finally, they receive a court date. Many appear dressed in their Sunday best, relatives and friends in tow to take snapshots of the Big Day. There’s no judge present, just a clerk who stamps their papers. But for the changelings, the brief ritual has all the excitement of a hospital delivery room.

Just ask Michael Jahanshahi. Last Friday, he stood in the crowded courthouse hall with his wife and two children, making a slashing motion with his hand. “We’re cutting our name in half,” he said. “It’s a lot easier for everything, especially making restaurant reservations.”

Moments later, Michael Jahan smiled broadly as he strode from the wood-paneled courtroom. “I feel lighter already,” he said.

One row behind him sat an 18-year-old student from El Monte named Maria. She had appeared for a more delicate reason: Since the child’s father abandoned her, she decided to change her 4-month-old son’s name.

The no-account daddy was gone, she said. So he could take his name right along with him.

“He doesn’t get the privilege of having my son carry his name,” she said quietly, her lips pursed. “It’s that simple.”

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For people like Yelena Pokryshevsky, (pronounced Po-cree-shev-ski), it wasn’t so simple. Her name was just too complicated. Then there are always those who switch from the conservative to the far-out, like the former Michele Lee Albrecht who became Sunshine Dizzy Kashmir.

And there’s the Los Angeles-area artist, the former Heather Marie Cheesebro, who believed her first name was too common and her last too klutzy. Now-- voila! --she’s Mortisha Knight.

“She’s happy now,” said Mary Thorndal, a Westwood attorney hired to handle the change. “For her, Mortisha is unusual. And Knight is so easy, nobody forgets it.”

In ethnically diverse Southern California, many names simply become cross-cultural casualties. Some immigrants find that the surname that once served them well suddenly takes a wrong turn in their adopted homeland--such as the Korean-native who soon learned that Dung Heip suggested something repulsive in English-speaking San Diego.

From her desk in Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles, Dorothy Holmes heard just about every name in the book. For eight years, before she became a clerk in the small claims appeals division, she worked in the court’s name-change office, otherwise known as Department 1A.

She’s seen mothers who changed their toddlers’ names to Strawberry or Yahoo; parents who named their twins Donald and Daisy; and the mother who called her daughter Cherry Blossom. And then there was the father who wanted to change the names of his three preschool-aged boys to Faith, Hope and Charity.

“What are these parents thinking?” Holmes asks. “I told this guy, ‘I’m not trying to poke my nose into your business but do you know how cruel kids can be? When your boys go to school, they’ll be the laughing stock of the classroom.’ But the father wouldn’t listen to me.”

In Los Angeles, there’s also an ample touch of the absurd.

Like the two clowns who came to the courthouse dressed in character and changed their names to Are You Kidding? and Who You Kidding? Or the portly, white-bearded gentlemen who showed up to become Mr. Santa Claus--while he handed out peppermint sticks to children around the courthouse. (He drove a late-model Buick, sans reindeer, to the courthouse.)

There are characters like the newly named Black Bird, Black Witch, Satan and Queen of Bohemia. And people who wanted to change their names to Ronald Reagan, John Wayne or Madonna. In the past, the court has requested applicants send letters to famous personalities announcing their name change intents. If the change is opposed, it’s up to a judge to rule.

Sometimes, the name change office can be a painful place. Like the day the tearful young woman told court officials she wanted a new name because of sheer shame. Her father had just been convicted of murder, she explained, and she couldn’t live with that.

And there are the sex change cases.

“We get a lot of walking disasters in here,” Holmes says. “There’s people with sex change operations that didn’t take, men still talking like men. They want feminine names but their hands are still big and hairy. And those voices! Low as a croak.”

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Experts say the great number of anxious name-changers suggests how seriously people consider the names by which they are called.

“For many people, a name change can be better than plastic surgery. It’s a form of therapy for those who literally want to become someone else,” says Ralph Slovenko, a professor of law and psychiatry at Wayne State University School of Law in Detroit, who has published articles in professional journals on the sociological issues surrounding name changes.

He criticizes parents who bestow embarrassing names on their children--in effect, submitting them to the anguish of a boy named Sue. Like the man named Hogg who named his daughter, Ima. Or the unfortunate girl branded Shanda Lear.

And there’s the Hawaiian man who named his daughter, “Jessica the heavenly beauty who loves England and was born the year of the Queen’s jubilee.” The girl, Slovenko says, is called Jubi for short.

“This is really another form of child abuse,” he says. “Can you think of anything more important than a person’s name? People live with their names. They identify with them. Some parents name their children after personal heroes, so they’ll have something to aspire to.”

In the end, says the former Robin Hood, a new name can mean a new life.

For too long, the 45-year-old San Diegan suffered the stupid jokes. No, he didn’t live in the Sherwood Forest. He didn’t have an archrival named the sheriff of Nottingham. And he certainly didn’t rob from the rich to give to the poor.

For years, he tried to roll with the punches. He even named his son, John, so when wiseacres at parties asked where Little John was, he could say “Home in bed.”

Five years ago, he gave up. He changed his name and never looked back, making the break so cleanly that he doesn’t want his new name published.

“I’m a different person, absolutely,” he says. “Now I have a name that I chose myself, not something just handed to me. And whenever I meet someone with a strange name, I tell them how easy it is to change it.

“Nobody should have to live through the hell of having a name they don’t like.”