Germany               Sehr geehrter Herr Coignard,       8 December 2025


   These words began one of the letters I recently discovered in my
   (physical) letterbox.  In this note, I'll explain how it came to pass
   that my surname has only been displayed on my letterbox since the
   beginning of December.

   It's rather easy to deduce that I was once called by a different
   name, since I explicitly reference my previous name in my weblog's
   description.  And, of course, I've already written several notes here
   about this.  Yes, it's simply how things turned out historically that
   the matter of one's chosen name has always been extraordinarily
   important to me: we don't choose to be born, and it would be
   especially frustrating to go through one's entire life under a name
   that someone else also chose for you.  But that's not the point.  My
   passport states my old name, and I've no intention of changing that
   in future: it's a rather handy little life cheat-code, thanks to
   which one can easily switch contexts.  If someone addresses me by my
   old name, I know it's either the state or someone from work.  My new
   name, however, is what all my acquaintances, friends, and family call
   me.  This division could also be observed in the physical realm: for
   instance, my letterbox at home was, until recently, labelled with my
   passport surname, whilst postcards and other letters addressed to my
   new name I collected from my PO Box at the post office.  Let's
   discuss that today.

   One Friday, as usually happens on this day of the week, I was
   strolling through Wolfen's Altstadt to check my post box.  There I
   discovered a couple of letters from Deutsche Post, in which the
   postal service informed me that some letters couldn't be delivered to
   the PO Box, and that the postman couldn't find a letterbox for the
   surname Coignard at my home address.  The post office instructed me
   to sort this matter out, that is, to ensure my new surname was placed
   on the letterbox, "otherwise we'll terminate our contract with you
   without further notice."  No problem: I picked up a set of stickers
   at Kaufland, stamped out the surname with a letter stamp set, and
   stuck it on both the letterbox and the doorbell button.  All that
   remained was to bring this arrangement into more respectable form, so
   I wrote to my contact person at the housing cooperative where I rent
   my flat, explaining that, well, this and that, the post office sent a
   letter, I've stuck a sticker with the surname on, please be aware,
   and I've done a bit of legal research on why I'm permitted to do
   this, and here's a link to our contract as well: there was a clause
   in the Hausordnung section stating that notification isn't required
   if it concerns ordinary nameplates, and that the landlord wouldn't
   object as long as it doesn't damage the property.

   Naturally, in addition to my own investigation, I consulted with my
   lawyer, referencing everything I'd studied, and my lawyer confirmed
   that yes, my arguments were sound, everything was spot on.  A bit
   later the housing cooperative replied, saying they'd heard me, their
   lawyer was now looking into the matter, and they'd write back with
   the results.  What concerned them: firstly, without notification they
   might have accidentally spotted the sticker themselves and thought
   I'd decided to secretly organise a sublet without informing them.
   Secondly, Germany has this thing called the Einwohnermeldeamt, the
   residents' registration office, and rather strict registration laws.
   Any surname suddenly appearing on a letterbox that the landlord knows
   nothing about is a rather enormous red flag for the cooperative: they
   might think someone unregistered has decided to live there, which
   carries the threat of fines for them if that turns out to be the
   case.  Actually, in my letter I paid particular attention to proving
   that Podivilov and Coignard are one and the same person.

   In the letter I provided evidence of using my name: for instance, in
   the ISNI registry the name René Coignard explicitly references
   Mikhail Podivilov, and an ORCID identifier is also listed there.
   References to my website and my works, where I'd used this name,
   proved sufficient.  To make things easier for them, I designated this
   name as a Künstlername, literally a creative pseudonym.
   Incidentally, after obtaining German citizenship I'll have the
   opportunity to include this name in a special field in the passport
   reserved for Künstlername: the law explicitly permits this.
   Eventually, after a bit of time, when the housing cooperative's
   lawyer had examined my case, he agreed with my arguments and I was
   delighted to learn that the nameplate on my letterbox would be
   updated.  At the beginning of last week, one day I returned home and
   discovered they'd indeed updated it, and now it reads:

   |  Mikhail Podivilov
   |  aka René Coignard

   Prima!  In the end everyone's satisfied: the landlord, the
   Einwohnermeldeamt, Deutsche Post, and me.  My postal address is
   available a few notes below, so do send postcards to mark such a
   momentous occasion, perhaps.  Both Mikhail Podivilov and René
   Coignard would be absolutely delighted.  I guarantee it.





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