Because of my age, Prince was not "Prince" for much of my childhood; I was introduced to him as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" and just assumed that that was all we'd ever call him in the future.
Renaming oneself is surely not any new phenomenon, but the reasons seem to get more and more interesting. Malcolm Little famously erased his "slave name" and replaced it with an X. I also just recently learned about FM-2030. And then there's the self-naming practices that grew around the hacking and early web scenes, and which still features prominently in places like the FGC and furry fandom.
So you've got a guy fighting cynical capitalist legalism, a guy attempting to erase the detritus of colonialism from his identity, another guy trying to erase his ties to tribalism, and then a bunch of people trying to mask their identities in presumed Dark Forest (concluding in, essentially, the creation of alter egos).
Own yourself. Own fragments of yourself. Own your public self as something separate from your private self. Own a public self that does things your normal public self would never (be allowed to) do. Own a new identity, maybe it'll replace your main one if it really works out.
I also learned of prince while he was the artist formerly known as prince and it took me a long time to learn that it wasn’t some quirky stage name but that he actually was an artist that was formerly named prince.
Even to this day, calling him prince feels like an abbreviation.
Because of my age, Prince was not "Prince" for much of my childhood; I was introduced to him as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" and just assumed that that was all we'd ever call him in the future.
Renaming oneself is surely not any new phenomenon, but the reasons seem to get more and more interesting. Malcolm Little famously erased his "slave name" and replaced it with an X. I also just recently learned about FM-2030. And then there's the self-naming practices that grew around the hacking and early web scenes, and which still features prominently in places like the FGC and furry fandom.
So you've got a guy fighting cynical capitalist legalism, a guy attempting to erase the detritus of colonialism from his identity, another guy trying to erase his ties to tribalism, and then a bunch of people trying to mask their identities in presumed Dark Forest (concluding in, essentially, the creation of alter egos).