What's in a name...

2020 had been a busy year for Shaun. When he first began working at Births, Death and Marriages it was a sweet deal. He'd see maybe nine, ten people per day, most of them between midday and 2pm as people came in on their lunchbreaks. Occasionally there'd be the odd annoying Family Tree-er who'd bail him up for hours as they tried to connect their family to royalty (usually French or English). But, all in all, it was a good job that left him plenty of time to stand at the counter doing nothing. Shaun was not an ambitious man. But lately, since about 2018, things had been getting progessively busier. Suddenly changing names had become as fashionable as getting lower back tattoos removed. Shaun was getting 80 to 100 people past his counter each day, all making enquiries about how to go about changing their names from A to B. It pissed him off, particularly because Tom, his manager, refused to put anyone else on to help him. It wasn't just the volume of name changes that bothered Shaun, it was also the type of changes he was dealing with. When he first started working at BD&M 25 years ago, most name changes were fun, like the guy who changed his name from John Westerland to Roxx Ha Da. But these days it was the opposite.
"Hi, how can I help you?" Shaun would ask.
"I want to change my name," the customer, usually in their early 20s, would reply.
"Ok, can I get your current name please."
"Phillip Murphy."
"Ok, and what would you like to change it to?" he would ask.
"Phillip Murphy."
Tom had long since stopped pausing at this point of the conversation.
"Ah, could you spell Phillip for me please."
"Sure. It's Phillip- P-H-Y-L-L-Y-P-E."
There were at least ten of these type of transactions per day. The others were mostly people looking to change their name to John (Jaydun), Mary (Cazzmin), or Scott (Pennsylvania).
The changes that Shaun liked the most were those 18-20 year olds who had been named after early 21st century celebrities. He and the others in the office reckoned they could spot a Shakira from the back of the queue. The conversations between queueing customers were often quite bitter.
"Yeah, I'm Leearna. I'm trying to get a job now, so... I guess it was just time to use a name that wasn't bogus."
"I know how you feel. I wish I'd changed mine earlier so my university degree didn't have the word Jaxxon on it."
"I hate my parents, hey. I know they wanted me to be an individual and everything, but, I want to be different because I choose to be, not because I'm afraid of telling people my name, or making friends... I'm Tahneesha, by the way. Nice to meet you."
Shaun would silently curse the parents of the early 21st century as he stamped the huge pile of change of name applications on his desk. He often daydreamed about moving to a collectivist culture, where people's last names came first, and where phonetics appeared only in the dictionary, and not on business cards.