You could also spend 10 mins like my brother did and just change your name to something you like, maybe even name yourself after a celebrity, rather than the one assigned to you.
The stated purpose is so that you can't change your name in order to (for example) escape debt. So the way to do this is to pay to put an announcement in a legal periodical. She had to do it in two separate places: one was mandated (The Legal Intelligencer, which sounds like something out of Harry Potter), and she had the choice of a few others, of which she picked the cheapest one.
The ads themselves didn't cost $1000, but the whole process (including changing the name on her passport, etc.) came close to that.
You don't have the ability to change how someone (everyone?) else reacts to an unusual name.
"We can't always go through life-changing things to make other people happy ... and I had to learn that early on."