‘Like Brad Pitt’s children, I decided to drop my father’s last name’

As a child, Sarah* would look at her family name on her passport and not feel any connection to it. Her relationship with her father was virtually nonexistent — he had spent the majority of her childhood in prison on drug offenses, while her mother singlehandedly raised her. So when Sarah turned 16 — the age you can legally change your name in the U.K. — she took the leap to swap her dad’s surname for her mom’s.

“It gave me a sense of control over a situation that I felt was very unfair to me,” says Sarah, now 25 and working as a music publicist. “I was allowed to decide for myself, whereas everyone else told me how I should feel or that I should excuse his behavior.”