@La_chica_gomela: Yep, first and last name.
It took me a long time to pick “Rowan.” My given name didn’t feel right and was beginning to actually make me uncomfortable, and I decided if I was going to change it, I was only going to do it once, so I better find the right one. It took me about nine months to be sure Rowan was right. (Nine months. How symbolic!) That was November of 2007, which would’ve made me 23.
Sadly, “Rowan” did NOT go with my last name. It would’ve been one of those names along the same lines as Rose Bush and Robin Banks. I wasn’t especially attached to my parents’ last name, so I decided to change that, as well. “MacBean” was the fake last name I’d already been using for privacy reasons since I was first allowed to stalk the internet unsupervised at age 9. I picked that when I was a kid because my nickname was Bean and I was really interested in the Scottish part of my ancestry. So it’s very solidly a part of my identity already. Something that made me comfortable, and that other people were already familiar with.
It’s not legally changed yet because, while a name change isn’t very expensive, I have no source of income right now, and when I get one, I have some other things to pay for first. But it will be legally changed eventually. And, like I said, outside of my family, even the mailperson knows me by that name by now. Since I’ve been “Bean” forever, none of my friends who knew me before the change have any problem with remembering.