Changing my name 💖🌧️ Amanda Rain Lui

I’ve changed my name before. Legally changed my name. I did everything to update my identification cards and financial accounts, made new email addresses, shifted everything over… and I’m about to do it again.

I was born Lui Natasha Amanda. I am currently Rain Lui Yu Xin (吕雨馨). And I was planning on becoming Amanda Rain Lui (吕雨馨) in October, as a birthday present to myself, but it seems that I have to make that move much sooner.

My mom and I are planning a holiday in October, and I don’t want to wait until we come back at the end of the year to make the change.

I’m also slowly realising that I can’t move forward without legally changing my name.

And though I’ve been on this journey before, I find myself looking up all the steps. (That’s life when you have no memory retention, plus I didn’t think I’d need this information again! 🙂 ) So just in case I walk down the same path, here are the steps. And prices. And thoughts.

(Hi, if you’re reading this because you want to legally change your name and you’re in Singapore too.)

Here’s how to legally change our name in Singapore — the what, who/where, and how much it’ll cost.

Really quickly, the roadmap looks like this:

Deed Poll
- Lawyer | $40-$160 | within a week (sometimes a day)
- It’s a document that shows our name change, required by the ICA.
Photo
- Our own, photo shop, photo booth | About $10 | 45 minutes
Identity Card
- ICA | $60 | three working days
Passport
- ICA | $70 | right now, more than seven weeks.

// hey you’re reading a work in progress. more words to come soon!

Getting a deed poll

We will need a document called a Deed Poll, which means we’ll need a lawyer. It’s a document that states we’ll be changing our name, and it’s signed by a lawyer.

Where to get one?

I’ve gotten two deed polls from two different lawyers (I’ve typed my journey and compared them: Getting a deed poll in Singapore), and I can wholeheartedly recommend Bonsai Law LLP.

Head over to Bonsai Law LLP with this link: Deed Poll, Change of Name Singapore – Bonsai Law Corporation.

Taking a photo

There are a couple of ICA | Photo Guidelines to follow, and my mom wanted to make sure we got it right.

So my parents and I went down to the photo shop, smiled really quickly, paid $12+ per person, and half and hour later we all got photos we hated. 🙂

There’s something odd about camera lenses in photo shops: they all make our faces wider! I’ve taken photos in three different photo shops in the last few years, and I look terrible in all of them. Apart from a too-intense stare (because I can’t see without my glasses), I had weird hair and a wide faces stretched to different degrees.

I suggest trying the photo booths sprinkled all over the island (good light and we can take our time to breathe).

My parents and I tried taking photos at home. We took two days, turned on all the right lights at home, chose the photos we liked, and then I spent another day removing the backgrounds and cropping and scaling the photos to fit the 400 x 514 pixel requirement using GIMP.

Here’s the photo I paid for, and then the photo my parents took (a little different — 500 x 500 and with a background added — just for this website because why not?).

I’ve sent in my chosen photo (with the right dimensions) with my NRIC and passport application. Will update this when I get a reply.

Getting a new NRIC and passport

The journey:

Starting here to see what documents we need: ICA | Replace Identity Card (Change of Particulars/Damaged),
We’ll click to ICA – Identity Card Re-Registration, and
Scroll to [ Change IC Particulars (Self) ].
- I can’t put that last link here because it redirects through to a Singpass login.
We login with Singpass
- Choose our name [Next]
- Upload a photo
- Edit our name [Done]
- Look through our other details (update them if needed)
- Upload our deed poll
- [Next]
Passport details add-on
- We can apply for a passport together, so [Yes]
- Have you acquired the citizenship or passport of another country/place? [No]
- [Next]
Review
- Look through everything
- “I declare…” [Y]
- “I acknowledge…” [Y]
- [Proceed to payment] (wait, click again, click another ten times, refresh and re-do, click again, sigh…)
MyCart Payment Summary
- $60 IC
- $70 Passport
- $130 Total
- [Proceed to payment] (here I had to refresh the page.)
Payment Selection
- This is yours to work on…
  - PayNow, probably.
Acknowledgement
- I click for the receipt (pop-ups blocked),
- Because I’m annoying about it — copy and paste the acknowledgement text into a txt file,
- [Save as pdf].