How to Change Your Name in Scotland: NRS Process & Fees

Scotland does not use deed polls. If you were born or legally adopted in Scotland, you change your name by asking National Records of Scotland (NRS) to record the change against your birth or adoption certificate, for a £40 fee plus £10 per additional family member. People born outside Scotland, and people in Northern Ireland, use different routes, both covered below.

Scotland Does Not Use Deed Polls

Anyone researching a Scottish name change after reading about deed polls in England and Wales needs to unlearn that route first. Scotland's mechanism is administrative rather than a formal legal deed: National Records of Scotland (NRS), the body that holds Scotland's birth, marriage, death and adoption records, runs a service that formally records a change of forename or surname and reissues the underlying birth or adoption certificate to match. A new extract of that certificate then shows both the previous name and the new one, rather than replacing the record silently.

NRS is explicit that this service is not for everyone. It is only available to people whose birth or adoption is registered in Scotland, and it is not the route for a name change that follows marriage, divorce or a civil partnership, which Scots law treats as needing no formal process at all (see below).

Who Can Use This Service: The Full Eligibility Test

NRS's live guidance page summarises eligibility in short form: you can use this service if you were born or adopted in Scotland. NRS's published RCN1 leaflet guidance adds two further categories that the live page's summary does not spell out:

1. A person whose birth is registered in Scotland.
2. A person who was legally adopted in Scotland.
3. A person who is the subject of a parental order made in Scotland, per NRS's RCN1 leaflet guidance.
4. A person who is the subject of an entry in the Gender Recognition Register in Scotland, per NRS's RCN1 leaflet guidance.

The live page's "born or adopted in Scotland" shorthand is accurate as far as it goes, but it is a compressed summary. Anyone unsure whether they qualify because their situation does not fit neatly into "born" or "adopted" should check against the leaflet's fuller list, or confirm directly with NRS, rather than relying on the live page's short summary alone.

What It Costs

Recording a change of name through NRS costs £40, and an extra £10 applies for each additional family member included in the same application, as of August 2026. Fees are set on NRS's own cost schedule and can change, so treat this as a current snapshot rather than a fixed figure.

You do not pay when you submit the application. NRS reviews it first and then emails payment instructions, so the £40 (or higher, for multiple family members) becomes due only once NRS has confirmed the details of the request.

The £40 fee covers recording the change itself. It does not include a replacement birth or adoption certificate showing the new name: NRS explains how to order one only after the change is complete, and does not publish a separate certificate fee on its costs page. Anyone budgeting for the process should expect an additional, currently unstated cost if they want a fresh certificate rather than just having the change recorded on file.

Age Rules and How to Apply

Someone aged 16 or over applies for themselves, using NRS's over-16 application form.

Applications for a child under 16 must be made by a "qualified applicant," which NRS defines by reference to parental responsibility rather than parentage alone: the parent, where only one parent has parental responsibilities for the child; both parents, where both hold parental responsibilities; or, where neither parent holds parental responsibilities, any other person who does.

Within the under-16 group, the process further splits by age. A child under 12 months old uses a distinct application track of its own. A child aged 12 months to 16 years uses the standard under-16 application form.

Where the child's parents were not married to, or in civil partnership with, each other, an additional consent form may be required, and if the birth was registered or re-registered on or after 4 May 2006 with the father's name on the birth entry, his signature may also be required unless a court has removed his parental responsibilities. Treat this consent detail as a general pointer rather than a final answer, since it comes from older NRS guidance rather than the current application page, and confirm the exact form requirements directly with NRS before applying.

How Many Times You Can Change a Name

NRS caps how often a name change can be recorded, and the limit differs by age and by whether it is a forename or a surname:

• 16 and over: one forename change in a lifetime, and up to three surname changes, with a gap of at least five years required between each surname change.
• Under 16: one forename change and one surname change.

There is a further nuance for young children. If a forename change was already recorded while the child was under 12 months old, no further forename change can be recorded before the child turns 16. That block applies only to forename changes; it does not prevent a surname change being recorded separately.

Processing Time

NRS aims to email within 20 days of receiving an application, to confirm the details of the requested change and to send payment instructions. Once payment is made, NRS aims to email again within 15 working days to confirm the change is complete and explain how to order a replacement certificate. Treat these as NRS's current published targets rather than guaranteed turnaround, and budget for both stages, since the clock effectively resets once payment is due.

If You Were Born Outside Scotland

NRS's own change-of-name service only applies to births, adoptions, parental orders and Gender Recognition Register entries registered in Scotland. If you were born outside Scotland but now live there and want to change your name, NRS directs you to one of three separate options instead:

1. The name change process in your country of birth.
2. A deed poll, for which NRS links directly to the England and Wales gov.uk guidance. See our guide to deed polls for the unenrolled and enrolled routes, fees and what each one covers.
3. A statutory declaration, sworn in front of a notary public or a justice of the peace, which you can book through the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.

The statutory declaration route is confirmed by NRS specifically for people in this born-outside-Scotland position. That is a Scotland-specific finding: it does not establish that a standalone statutory declaration works the same way for a passport application in England and Wales, where HM Passport Office's own guidance does not name it as an accepted route.

Changing Your Name After Marriage, Divorce or Civil Partnership in Scotland

Scots law places no obligation to change your surname after getting married, getting divorced, or entering or ending a civil partnership. If you do want to start using a new surname in one of those situations, NRS's guidance states that most organisations will accept either a marriage or civil partnership certificate, or a decree of divorce, as evidence.

That is a genuine difference from the passport-specific rules in England and Wales. HM Passport Office's own evidence list for someone reverting to a previous surname after divorce does not include the decree absolute or final order at all; it asks instead for a signed "for all purposes" statement, a document showing the new name already in use, a marriage or civil partnership certificate showing both names, and a birth certificate. Scotland's NRS guidance, by contrast, names the decree of divorce itself as acceptable evidence.

The practical lesson is the same one that runs through every organisation covered in this cluster: do not assume that evidence accepted by one body, or in one part of the UK, will automatically satisfy another. If an organisation in Scotland asks for more evidence than a certificate or decree, NRS says to contact it directly for guidance. See our guide to changing your name after marriage or divorce for how this compares with the England and Wales rules in detail.

Northern Ireland: A Different System Again

Northern Ireland does not follow the England and Wales deed-poll model either, and it is not simply "Scotland's system under another name." Its primary, Northern Ireland-specific route is registration with the General Register Office for Northern Ireland (GRONI), which records a change of first name or surname for someone born or legally adopted in Northern Ireland, in a similar spirit to NRS's service in Scotland. A deed poll is offered only as a secondary option, and the general nidirect guidance simply links out to the gov.uk England and Wales deed-poll pages for that route, with no Northern Ireland-specific procedure or fee of its own published on the page.

GRONI's fees, as published on nidirect, are:

The application must be signed in front of a Justice of the Peace, a lay magistrate, or a practising solicitor. Justices of the Peace and lay magistrates do not charge for witnessing the application. For a child with two qualified applicants, both signatures need to be witnessed.

A £50.32 figure for Northern Ireland deed-poll enrolment circulates in some non-official sources online. It does not appear on GRONI's or nidirect's own published guidance, so it should not be relied on or repeated as a confirmed fee.

If you need to update documents such as a passport or driving licence once your name change is recorded, whether in Scotland or Northern Ireland, see our guide to updating your name on official documents, and for the England and Wales deed-poll process itself, see changing your name by deed poll. If your name change follows a divorce, our guide to divorce in Scotland covers the process that leads up to it.

This page is general legal information about National Records of Scotland's change-of-name service and Northern Ireland's GRONI registration service, current as of August 2026. It is not legal advice, and fees, forms and processing times can change. Anyone applying should check the current NRS or nidirect guidance directly, and consult a solicitor if their situation is unusual, for example where parental responsibility is disputed or a name change needs to be recognised in another country.