This Santa drives a bus

Every morning in a small town just south of Salt Lake City, Santa Claus swaps his green and red indoor garb for a blue-collared bus driver’s shirt. He wears his trademark cap during 10-hour shifts for the Utah Transit Authority, and a name tag on his chest reads “S. Claus” — a nod from his employer that he is, indeed, who he claims to be.

Mr. Claus stops driving in December to prepare for the holidays with an annual round of private parties and Christmas festivals. For those who question the legitimacy of his name, he can show a driver’s license and credit card issued to “Santa Claus.”

An attorney helped him win the right to use the name. Mr. Claus, who until August 2001 was named David Lynn Porter, had to fight for his new moniker.

A local judge first denied the white-bearded look-alike’s request for a name change, saying it would cause confusion and thwart any legitimate complaints against him from plaintiffs who would face the challenge of suing Santa Claus.

Mr. Claus had to go all the way to the Utah Supreme Court to win his case.

“It’s the best thing I ever did,” Mr. Claus, 44, said in an interview. “People come up to me all the time and ask, ‘Is that really your name?’”

Now, with a new name and his own Web site (www.sclaus.net), the former Mr. Porter highlights a thriving business in name changes.

Americans nationwide are changing their names to reconnect with ethnic roots, fit into the culture, escape unwanted relationships, or proclaim their individuality in a way that’s difficult to ignore, say lawyers who handle name-change cases.

Others simply don’t like their name, and shifting to ones they prefer allows them to create new identities, said Anne Bernays, co-author of “The Language of Names: What We Call Ourselves and Why It Matters.”

“It’s a very, very profound change to make in your life,” said Mrs. Bernays, who co-wrote the 256-page book with husband and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Justin Kaplan. “The name you get used to by a certain age, it’s not just a label. It’s you.”

The District is no exception to the name-change phenomenon. In 2002, the number of petitions filed in D.C. Superior Court rose 9 percent from the previous year to 305 — a five-year high, according to court statistics.

Some of the court’s most recent name-change petitions are as diverse as they are eye-catching. Earlier this month, a woman named Rebecca changed her name to Beck to accompany a sex-change operation. A few weeks ago, a Washington woman had to switch her 1-year-old son’s middle and last names because they were printed in the wrong order on his birth certificate.

A recent case that might have raised some eyebrows if approved involved a Washington resident who tried to formally change his name to Jesus Christ. The man, 52-year-old Peter Robert Phillips, already had a D.C. driver’s license, a social security card and a Florida birth certificate under the name Jesus Christ, but he needed court documentation to obtain a driver’s license in West Virginia, court records show.

He at first gave no reason for the change, which D.C. law requires, and when pressed by a D.C. judge he hand-wrote a statement saying he was “a member of a religious order known as the kingdom of God. According to the New Testament of the Bible, anyone using the name Jesus Christ should be allowed to do so.”

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