It's a fundamental right to go by whatever name you want in Common Law actually. You have to do it fairly consistently for entities to HAVE to recognize it though, and it does a good fuckup of your credit reports when you change, and is pretty hard to do pre-18 (and you have to tell lots of entities when you have a felony record).

So yeah, fundamental right is accurate.

http://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/documents/1488013400EN.pdf?...