Documents such as a driver’s license do not determine what constitutes a person’s legal name.
65 C.J.S. Names § 1.
The Trustee relies on the Certificate of Correction and the fact that the Debtor’s driver’s license spells her last name as Thibault in arguing that that spelling is the “correct” one. But the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the “SJC”) has explained that documents such as a driver’s license do not determine what constitutes a person’s legal name. For example, in Clark, the SJC noted that even the name on an individual’s birth certificate may not be the individual’s “true” name under Massachusetts law, in light of the common law rule. See 846 N.E.2d at 773. And in Sec’y of the Commonwealth v. City Clerk of Lowell, the SJC took care to clarify that to the extent any of its earlier cases had “suggest[ed] that a person has a ‘legal name’ or a name ‘with legal effect,’ different from the name he has lawfully chosen, those suggestions were not necessary to decision.” 366 N.E.2d 717, 722, 373 Mass. 178 (1977) (emphasis supplied).
In re Thibault, 518 B.R. 698, 703 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2014)