What Tom said above:
- If your legal name and preferred name are different because of gender, we’ll happily change your preferred name.
- If your preferred name is different because you go by another name, then by and large we’ll accept a variation of either your first name, or second name. As an example my brother has been known as CJ since he was about 7 years old, but that appears nowhere in his name. So we’d accept CJ Surname as a derivation for their preferred name.
Usually we’ll update your legal name automatically because as part of our know your customer checks the legal name on your account needs to make the name on the ID you provide. For example if your driving licence uses initials, rather than the full name then we’d need to use the initials on your legal name, if your passport used your full name and you signed up with that ID doc then we’d use that.
However being part of a responsible bank we also need to make sure we understand why you want to use your preferred name. Sometimes people use something ridiculous like Mickey Mouse but for others there might be a rational explanation so we want to speak to people to understand it so that we can accommodate people’s needs as best as we can.
Sometimes these rules might seem like arbitrary but they are essential - for example if we’re running a CIFAS checks or a check on the electoral roll then it’s likely that on those databases the “legal” name will match the name on your document so we have a greater chance of making sure any hits are genuine.