CALIFORNIA  –  For more than a decade, Hannah had been known by two surnames. On social media, sports rosters, email and restaurant bookings, she was Hannah Leonard, sharing her surname with her mother. But legally, and at work and school, she had a different surname – the one she inherited from her father. Hannah’s parents divorced when she was a toddler and she hasn’t had much of a relationship with her dad since. She says she last saw him seven years ago and isn’t sure where he’s living now. Last month, the 25-year-old in California legally changed her surname to Leonard-Ripley, removing the reminder of her father and replacing it with a name combining her mother’s maiden name and her husband’s surname.

That same month, two of the adopted children of Hollywood divorcees Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt undertook an important legal step in the process to drop their father’s surname, something they began earlier this year. In April, Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt and Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt, aged 21 and 24, filed documents to remove their father’s surname from their names, according to media reports. In June and July, the siblings carried out the legal requirement of publishing their name-change intention in a local paper for four weeks. Both have already used the surname Jolie in some circumstances, including Zahara during her graduation ceremony earlier this year and Maddox in his credits on a film. Another of Jolie and Pitt’s six children, Shiloh, changed her surname to Jolie in 2024. Zahara and Maddox will have to wait until their court appearances in September to get the approval from a judge to change their names. Jolie met Pitt on the set of the 2005 film Mr and Mrs Smith, married in 2014 and filed for divorce in 2016 following an incident on board a private plane. Jolie told Vogue in 2020 that she had left Pitt for the “wellbeing” of her family. A source close to Pitt told BBC News that he regretted how things had unfolded with his family and that, while he was “heartbroken”, he respected his children’s decisions. Hannah says she had no emotional connection to her previous surname, and it often confused people when she would use two surnames in different contexts.  She had wanted to legally change her surname for years, but had been deterred by the cost. Getting married gave her the push to finally make the change. “I’ve never felt like my last name reflected the love that encompasses my life,” Hannah says. “And I wanted to make sure that my name reflected that. My mother’s love and also my husband’s love are very abundant and so important to me.” “Surnames have a close connection to identity,” says University of Chester lecturer Dr Harry Parkin, who has studied the history of names. When people change theirs, it can be a sign that they want to disconnect and disassociate from it, he adds.

Maggie, from Lincolnshire, told BBC News that she had no emotional connection to her previous surname, which she had inherited from her father. Her parents split up when she was a child and while she isn’t estranged from him, she says they’ve never been close. She adds that she had always “hated” the surname she inherited from her father, which included a profanity that she was teased for at school. “I didn’t want to be associated with it,” she says. Changing her surname to match her mother’s felt like a relief and Maggie says she now feels “more like myself”. “I wanted to be part of my mum’s family,” she says.