
Toyin Aimakhu in 2003 became Toyin Adeniyi-Johnson in 2013. Her name changed to Toyin Abraham (her family name) in 2016 and to Toyin Abraham-Ajeyemi in 2019. Building a personal brand as a female may lead to an identity crisis.
Culturally, women once belonged to their fathers, then their husbands. Despite the growing feminist movement and increased gender equality, the overwhelming commonness of this practice remains.
Your name is the “brand” you have been associated with since birth! It represents you, it’s your family name, and it’s how you are known publicly. If an organization is trying to find you online, they would use your name to search for you.
A personal brand name shows off your expertise, connects you with new people, and promotes your content and accomplishments. It helps build trust with new people, introduces you to new circles, and can help you earn more sales and job opportunities.
Personal branding is a huge investment of time and resources. If you have worked in your career for many years, it is how you are known. If you have created a “name” or “following” for yourself as an authority or celebrity in your field, your brand name is your identity card.
Before marriage, your last name has been reflected in all your achievements, school and college certificates, and bank accounts.
You have spent many hours every week updating your social media profiles, publishing new content, and engaging with your audience. You have your website and you have press coverage under my name.
Imagine doing all these consistently for 15 years + and suddenly, you have to change your brand name because you have transitioned from Miss. to Mrs. Now, your audience searches for your name on Google and gets confused because Chioma Nwosu is now Chioma Fakorede.
Despite cultural acceptance, name-changing has long-term implications for your brand. Changing your name affects the personal brand you are building. How could you possibly give up a name that has been with you your entire life? What would everyone else think?
Continuing to use your birth name as your brand name or giving up the name you have built is a decision many newly married or soon-to-be-married females may struggle with.
Those who decide to change their names when they marry also have to weigh the impact on their professional brands and social media profiles. Changing your name is a personal decision and there are many factors to consider when you are contemplating changing your last name:
The younger you are, the less attached you might feel to your last name. The older you are when you marry, the more connected or attached you are to the last name you’ve carried for so long.
Some women may not like the name of their new husband or feel as if this new last name doesn’t sound good with their first name. Others may feel directly the opposite and love their potentially new last name so they are eager to change from their maiden one.
If you love your maiden name and think it’s going to be impossible to make it any more memorable or distinct then you may want to simply hang on to it.
You may be itching to change your name because you had a bad reputation for some reason or another. Or, maybe you are just ready for a “rebrand” and want to live the next several decades starting with a clean slate and new name.
In some countries and cultures, it is illegal for women to change their last name and they simply have no option. The country of Greece does not require that women change their last names when they marry. Women in India have the right to choose whether or not they want to take up their husbands’ names.
How much relevant content do you have under a vanity Google search? The longer you have worked in your professional career path the more likely you are to have search results pop up under Google when your name is entered. Are you willing to alter your name slightly to dominate Google for searches?
If the domain name is already taken, you will never get found in the online space even if someone does a direct search for your name. If your name seems common, but when you search for it, nobody else dominates the search results, you still have a great chance of owning the space.
Imagine changing your name from Bimbo Smith to Bimbo James after marriage, only for the time to come to launch your website, and you discover that www.bimbojames.com is unavailable. It will be tougher to build brand authority when you don’t own your name as a .com.
Like Tope Alabi and Ibikun Awosika, some women may build strong personal brands after marriage. This is fine too. Altering your brand name is not necessary if your brand journey started after your wedding.
While it may feel like a big deal to alter your given name right now, if you have big dreams to be on stage, interviewed on TV, or write a lot of books, this small alteration may be worth it to achieve your bigger goals.
As a newly married woman, you have these options;
- Adopt your spouse’s surname
Tara Fela-Durotoye was Tara Sagay before marriage. Temi Popoola was a known Event Compere before she got married and rebranded as Temi Badru. Rebranding is a risky move. Not every personal brand survives after going through a rebranding process.
2. Combine your maiden name with your spouse’s name
For Funke Bucknor-Obruthe and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, hyphenating was to honour both their parent’s union and theirs with their husband. Keeping their father’s surname is preserving the personal and familial identity they have always had.
Motara Akanni changed to Motara Akanni-Lawrence. Sola Allyson became Sola Allyson-Obaniyi. Mercy Chinwo became Mercy Chinwo-Blessed.
Growing up in the brown roof city in Nigeria, Ronke Giwa was a household Radio Presenter. She got married and changed to Ronke Giwa-Onafunwa.
It took some time for some listeners to get used to that new brand name. It would have been worse if she had deleted and replaced Giwa with Onafunwa.
3. Keep your spouse’s name when divorcing
In a world where the divorce rate is climbing over 50 percent, changing your name when getting married is a thought-provoking move.
Faithia Williams and Saheed Balogun ended their marriage in 2006 but officially divorced in 2014. Faithia, however, adopted her ex-husband’s surname till 2017. Since she had built her career around it, she was hesitant to lose the name recognition she worked so hard for.
4. Stick to your maiden name even after marriage
While some women feel the need to take up the new family’s surname to feel a sense of belonging to the new world they stepped into, for other women, sticking to their maiden names even after the marriage gives them the feeling of being an independent modern-day woman.
The decision to stick to your maiden name even after marriage depends on whether you consider yourself a feminist. Some husbands permit their wives to continue with their maiden name after marriage.
For instance, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie still adopts her birth name even after marriage. Women like this, believe that their last name has no bearing on their brands. They believe that their brand is about their work, not their last name.
Sometimes, to adopt a surname that was laden with a history to which you have no connection feels like you are burying a part of your own identity.
5. Return to your maiden name after a divorce
Although returning to your father’s name after divorce costs so much money and paperwork, it can be a reasonable alternative for a female divorcee.
She changed from Funke Akindele in 2008 to Funke Akindele-Oloyede in 2012 and back to Funke Akindele in 2014. She later changed to Funke Akindele-Bello in 2016 and went back again to Funke Akindele in 2022.
Her brand journey has been altered significantly in less than two decades.
6. Use a “stage” name
In 2012, her name was Tiwa Savage. She got married to Tunji Balogun (Tee Billz) in 2013, her name remained Tiwa Savage. She divorced in 2018; she is still known as Tiwa Savage.
Depending on the industry where you belong, you can choose celebrity or stage names like Teni, Naijabrandchick, Simi, Lolo, Waje, Chidinma, or Sinach so that post-marriage and post-divorce will not affect your brand.
The great thing is that your legal name and the name you use in social settings do not have to match.
If you don’t have a middle name that works, you can also change the spelling of your last name to be easier to read and spell. You can also rework your last name into something simpler that’s easier to say and spell, and therefore easier to remember.
The reason celebrities make such a great example is that their name changes are done to achieve the same results we are looking for in a personal brand: to be easy to say, spell, differentiate, and remember.
In conclusion,
Whatever brand name you eventually choose, make sure that it is easy for people to spell, pronounce and remember. Ensure that it aligns with your brand positioning, embodies brand personality, embodies one (or more) brand benefits, avoids negative or stigmatized concepts, and has an available trademark.
© Kingsley Ndimele
Your Reliable Consultant