Though it is apparently quite common to add a fake middle initial in order to stand out amongst the John Smiths etc; I'm not overly excited about using a difficult Polish last name that most English speakers struggle with - you'd be amazed at the variety of pronunciations in a given day. I'm getting my first piece of work published soon and have a different last name in mind, a unique but simple British family name that has fallen out of use. I was just wondering if any academics here on AH have experience writing under a name other than their own, and if there had been problems with attribution etc?
It has caused confusion at conferences and with initial introductions more than anything.
My first name is a family name and I use my middle name on a day to day basis thanks to my parents electing to call me by it. So there has always been a moment of confusion, at the first day as a student or as a teacher, when people only know me by that first name and I have to clarify what I usually go by.
Then, when it came time to be published... for whatever reason... I decided to use that family name. Perhaps to honor or recognize my family connections. So now I have this professional identifier on my publications that differs from the name I go by on a day to day basis. So at conferences this can cause some initial confusion if people only know me by my publishing identity... sometimes I don't realize people are talking to me as I never use that name.
I still debate changing things yet again, maybe using just my first two initials from now on, though I'm not sure. I think I just have to accept my split identities and that I will have to explain that to people for the rest of my life...
If you're worried about recognition there's services out there design to help you get credit not based on name. You might look at orcid.org which is a non-profit organization that assigns researchers a unique numeric identifier and then integrates with publishers (and others) so that identifier is included with the publication metadata. As long as you include your ORCID iD with the publication you get credit regardless of what name you use.