David Lin said women generally change their name for family or household reasons, but males usually cite career concerns for making a switch.
Born into a family of fortune-tellers, David Lin has earned a reputation for having considerable knowledge of the significance of names. With 1.5 million registered members on his Web site, in addition to other fortune-telling services Lin's site offers name changing services for NT$700. For in-house name changing services, he charges up to NT$10,000.
Business is booming with around 1,000 new members signing up each month over the past year.
But fortune-tellers are not the only ones providing new names to the unlucky. On rare occasions, gods will grant an auspicious name to those in need. Taipei resident Lin Hsien-chien (林新建), 32, said that when he was younger he his health was poor. His mother prayed to the deity Matzu to provide him with a new name. Her prayers were answered.
"It just came to her. She started writing down the name, as if in a trance," Lin Hsien-chien said.
Is changing name jiggery-pokery or a road to good fortune?
"It's hard to say that the changes in my life can be attributed only to changing my name," Chan said, "but I can feel that my emotions have become more stable. I now feel happier and open-minded."
Lin Yu-teng offers a different perspective: "[Changing names] can only be 20 percent [effective]" because a person's fate is fixed at birth and it can be altered slightly. "But I feel that changing my name improved by [job] position."
Yeh Chuen-rong (葉春榮), an associate research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, says name changing is an integral part of the system of cosmological beliefs in Taiwan.
"[Taiwanese] have a different cosmology than the West. That is why they do these kinds of things. Even though Westerners know there are uncertainties, [they] don't try to decipher these secrets through names," Ye said.
There is no scientific basis for the existence of a Chrisitan god, Ye said, but many still believe because it gives them hope for the future.
Chan believes changing her name meant starting her life over.
"Now, I really feel strange and unfamiliar with my old name," she said. "But, I am not so sure that my sentimental transition came from my name change or the passing of time."
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