There is an important matter at stake right now, and I need advice from whomever's reading this. For those of you who don't know, ever since I was 13, I've been determined to have my name changed to something else other than Ivan Ngai Sum Sze. And now the opportunity to do so is finally available now I am "home", of legal age, and having been in the country for the past 12 months (it's part of the requirements to change your name, so I had to wait even after the immediate moment I turned 18). So now's the moment.

Before I go on, some of you might not know the reasons why nor the story behind this whole thing, and some of you might have already known it but have simply forgotten it. If you are one of those, the following two paragraphs would be what you need to know about what's going on. I have always hated my father and his side of the family. My father was a coward, worthless and pathetic man who hardly contributed anything to keep the family working. Things with my parents and the in-laws usually won't work out, and in the end, our families separated. My father did nothing afterwards to sustain me and my mother, but instead he ran away. My paternal grandmother has always been part of the problem with the arguments that goes on within the family, and after our families split up, she helped him covered his tracks so that he would not have to take care of us. All of this happened when I was around 3-4. That's the reason why I've never liked my last name/surname/family name/whatever you like to call it, and that's the reason why I would almost never use my full name unless for documentation or formal purposes, and that's the reason why I wanted to drop my family name.
I would not follow my mom's family name because her father was not a good man either and she was never all that proud of her family's history either. She even once said it herself, "all the men in the Cho family are worthless, only the women are those who are strong enough to struggle on their own and do well". To sum it up, let me just say that almost all the men in my family tree are either worthless cowards who are unable to do much to succeed or just simply jerks/a**holes/douchebags/etc. Most of my family tree is shattered, and I'd like to start all over. In this sort of situation, some people would rather not change their names and would rather retribute for the family name and make something good out of it. For my case, I am not too fond of that idea and I would rather start over. Therefore, I would like to change my surname to a completely new name. I would not be changing my name to some random last name and follow some random stranger's last name. I would like to start over, start my own family line, a new family name, and that's what I'm going to do.

Now the point of this entry isn't for me to ask whether anyone out there agrees with this idea of mine with changing my name, but it is to ask for advice, opinions, comments and suggestions for what I'm about to do next with the name change idea. Ever since I  was 13, I thought of using the name "Mordalfus". A completely fictional name that I got from a book called "Mattimeo" in the "Redwall" book series. There is no special reason why I chose to pick that name; I just like the name for the way it sounds and its uniqueness. However, despite how much I have mentioned this plan of mine to my friends over the past few years, it is until recently when I actually got the application form (I've been holding onto the form for the whole summer now because I need to first inform my mother of this decision of mine since I respect her and I was in HK for a month and a half with her during the summer) that I received a few negative feedback from people, telling me that it's a stupid idea (the name itself) and so on and so forth. It frustrates me at first that nobody said anything about it for all these years until now. And since I am a bit insecured and unconfident sometimes, I'm asking for as much advice as I can, as to whether I should stick with my plan of changing my surname to "Mordalfus", or whether I should pick an alternative name? If I should pick an alternative name, it would most probably be "Matthias" (love that name for a lot of reasons, even wanted it as a middle name, as well as naming a future son that name if I were to stick with Mordalfus) or something else (and that would require lots of planning and thinking all over again if that's the case). So in a nutshell, my final question is what would you think if someone had a family name/surname/last name, Mordalfus? Would you think it's weird or unique? Cool or terrible? Good or bad? This is very important to me since I'm talking about something that would be for the rest of my life, and I only have a short time to do this as I want to get this done before I graduate high school (in my last year of high school this year, remember?). I'd really appreciate it if you have read this all, respond to this entry and take the less-than-a-minute survey (if you really can't be bothered to reply directly, then at least take the survey). Please be honest and respectful. Thank you. :-)

Survey URL: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Qwq32K8MX3pJTZHIW3f5Pw_3d_3d