If you've ever changed your name legally, what was the story behind your motivation?

As some of you already know, I am changing my name to an all together different name (making Simone my actual first name, :) and there are many different reasons why but most have to do with looking towards the future and trying to disassociate with a past that no longer feels true to me. Not to mention that, as an immigrant, my name was butchered when some random person decided to misspell my last name and it had to stay that way (I was only 11 anyway) and that no one (except Russians) can correctly pronounce my first name. As I look forward towards getting my PhD, publishing work and becoming a professor I want a last name that restores the root of my mother’s last name (that I was given around the age of 5 because my actual birth last name made it easy for them to know I’m part Armenian and this was a cry to be murdered during the crisis between Azerbaijan and Armenia) and that is a little easier to spell and pronounce.

Whether you’ve changed your name through marriage or because you felt something else fit you better, why did you do it? And do you regret it?