You'd have to change your passport, TDL, SS, etc., but I know someone who did it. She ended up using an attorney, which made things easier. After seeing your garage, I'm guessing that you can afford a bit of legal assistance. ;-)
I've got a French last name. Even my own family pronounces it differently. I'll answer to anything that has an ass in the sound.
If your first name was Richard then "Lord" would be the obvious choice. With a name like Dick Lord, people would not lose your business card.
Funny. No offense to anyone who has one but my opinion is that hyphenated names are stupid. Just pick one. We talked about just using her last name when we got married, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Her maiden name was Payne, which is a pretty cool last name. The county clerk also told us we would have to pay for me to take the woman’s name, but not the other way around, which seemed like bullshit but was a moot point since she was taking my last name. I’ve thought about that.
Good work again Clutchfans! Some pretty funny posts in this thread. As for name change I’ve thought about it a few times. First because my given name is a very bad transliteration of the Chinese characters and isn’t easy to pronounce. Also my family name is transliterated using an older transliteration system that isn’t as close to Mandarin as the Pinyin system so thought about changing it to sound closer to Mandarin out of ethnic pride. Because of all the PITA problems though with changing legal documents along with professional licenses decided it’s not worth it. What I have done though is change the pronounciation of my name to be more phonetic wit how it’s spelled in English. It isn’t close to what the actual Mandarin is but leads to far less problems. When I am in The PRC or Taiwan I go by the mandarin pronunciation of my name and even had business cards printed in Chinese. One thing that is interesting about my life is that depending on when I met someone or how I met them they will pronounce my name differently.