The name is not the same.

[Neil Graham]

Kevin has commented in the Bognor 1968 thread about Bob Lee-Pentacost who subsequently became Bob Lee-Anderson. Possibly a separate thread is needed for players who change their names and the circumstances if known.

I'll make a start about an odd occurrence that happened at the Midlands Championships at Derby. It concerns the late Paul Shand who you might read about in the obituaries section. As usual with congresses you have players who promise to pay "on the day". These, of course, are the ones who invariably fail to show up. Paul presented a cheque in a totally different name arousing my suspicions. However he explained that he was a member of Equity and had a work name as an actor and that was the name on the cheque. Anyway it didn't bounce so it must have been true.

I know that there have been instances where detective work has been required to find the name of girl competitors who have ceased playing chess and have subsequently married. I'm sure there are other instances which can be detailed on this thread.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Kevin has commented in the Bognor 1968 thread about Bob Lee-Pentacost who subsequently became Bob Lee-Anderson. Possibly a separate thread is needed for players who change their names and the circumstances if known."

Yes - I was worried about putting it there as you can lose things. Like any discussion, the forum sometimes wanders off in strange and unknown directions.

One rather good player did turn up under another name at a tournament and I plucked up courage to ask why, and he just said "family reasons", so I stopped the questioning there. He did not hide the name change, so it wasn't someone playing under an assumed name to cheat.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Genealogy has completely replaced chess as the hobby that I spend far too much time on. One thing I've discovered is that sometimes someone will, in adulthood, change their surname to their mother's maiden name. Presumably this is after some sort of family breakup or falling out. In fact I've just remembered a childhood friend of mine doing this. He originally had a slightly silly surname, something like Winkie, so when at the age of 20 he told me that he was changing his name to Wall, I assumed it was because he was fed up with people making fun of him. However after chatting to him it turned out that the reason was that his Dad was a very unpleasant drunk and had been barred from almost all the pubs in the small town we lived in. This meant that his son had problems as well since as soon as someone found out his surname, they would make the connection with his Dad.

[John Townsend]

Thinking of silly names reminds me of the joke about the man who didn't like his name, which was Henry Augustus Forbes Hastings Plantagenet Brown Smellyperson, so he changed it to Henry Augustus Forbes Hastings Plantagenet Smith Smellyperson.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi John,

There is also the one about someone asking Bernard Crapper why he did not change his name.
Bernard replied: 'What too, Steven Crapper?'

I've often wondered how many parents now regret calling their daughter 'Alexa''

[Neil Graham]

I certainly knew a work associate who changed his surname by deed poll from "Titball" to "Travers" which was his mother's maiden name. I'll leave the reason for this for contributors to guess!

As regards playing under assumed names a clubmate of mine told me about an incident at the Southport Chess Festival when a competitor turned up as "Smith". However they had previously played and he was challenged. "Aren't you ******" ?" to which the reply was "No, No, No I'm Smith" The reason for this was that he had turned up with his mistress but had to make a hasty exit when his wife arrived unexpectedly.

I noted on the obituary for the late John Brooke who passed away in 2020 that we had crossed swords on a couple of occasions when I was Tournament Director/Arbiter at events. One of these was when he tried to pass himself off as a completely different John Brooke with a much lower rating and from a different area. Good try but failed.

[Ian Thompson]

I know that there have been instances where detective work has been required to find the name of girl competitors who have ceased playing chess and have subsequently married. I'm sure there are other instances which can be detailed on this thread.

If we're including fraudulent use of false names there's this old thread on the subject - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=2751.

[John Saunders]

Kevin has commented in the Bognor 1968 thread about Bob Lee-Pentacost who subsequently became Bob Lee-Anderson. Possibly a separate thread is needed for players who change their names and the circumstances if known.

Tsk, tsk, Neil, it's Bob Lee-Pentecost. Yours, pedantically, John.

[Paul Habershon]

There is also this from the History section:

viewtopic.php?t=10961#p249659

B F O'Sullivan sometimes entering as Navilluso. I believe he maintained that his alter ego played in a different style.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Getting names right is important - so not really pedantry. At least nowadays chess events tend to have fuller names than they did. I have more than one "R Smith" in my old scorebooks that I know are different people.

[John Clarke]

And then there are those who decide for whatever reason to drop part of their name:

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10090&p=227673&hil ... er#p227673

- although in David's case it's unlikely there was much confusion, seeing he was so well known in his capacity as match captain for Middlesex.

[Richard Thursby]

I once played an opponent who went by "Victor Castelada" and subsequently played the same person under the name "Raul Portugal". Later there was at least another different name as well, although I didn't play him under that. When he won a prize at one of Adam Raoof's tournaments, Adam made some quip about "whatever your name is".

[Neville Twitchell]

Kevin has commented in the Bognor 1968 thread about Bob Lee-Pentacost who subsequently became Bob Lee-Anderson. Possibly a separate thread is needed for players who change their names and the circumstances if known.

I'll make a start about an odd occurrence that happened at the Midlands Championships at Derby. It concerns the late Paul Shand who you might read about in the obituaries section. As usual with congresses you have players who promise to pay "on the day". These, of course, are the ones who invariably fail to show up. Paul presented a cheque in a totally different name arousing my suspicions. However he explained that he was a member of Equity and had a work name as an actor and that was the name on the cheque. Anyway it didn't bounce so it must have been true.

I know that there have been instances where detective work has been required to find the name of girl competitors who have ceased playing chess and have subsequently married. I'm sure there are other instances which can be detailed on this thread.

When I first knew him in the late 1970s/early 1980s he was officially R C Pentecost, and known as either Bob or Lee, though he preferred Lee. He changed his name to R C Lee-Pentecost and then to R C Lee-Anderson. I am not sure if these were official name changes or just informal. I am not sure of the reason for Lee but I think Anderson was his mother's maiden name, as I have seen mentioned in another thread.

[Neville Twitchell]

Hi John,

There is also the one about someone asking Bernard Crapper why he did not change his name.
Bernard replied: 'What too, Steven Crapper?'

I've often wondered how many parents now regret calling their daughter 'Alexa''

This reminds me of the story, which may be apocryphal, about Diana Dors whose real name was Diana Fluck. She was asked why she changed her name and said that it was because if she ever became famous her name would be up in lights and one of the lights might fail.

[Chris Goodall]

girl competitors who have ceased playing chess and have subsequently married

Ahem. You no longer have to be female to change your name upon marriage

Having read some Guardian/BBC horror stories (this was 2016), I was quite prepared to play war with any organisation that didn't accept my marriage certificate as proof of my name change. I was pleasantly surprised! The biggest stick-in-the-muds were the chess world - I think the only organisation without a formal name change policy who actually demanded to see the marriage certificate was the ICCF. Carl on this very forum asked me why I'd been using a fake name previously, to which I rather over-reacted out of a lack of anyone to play war with.

I happened to win the Northumberland U170 individual title in 2015 under my old surname, but hid the trophy from the Trophy Secretary long enough to get it engraved with my new one