If you decided to change your name online after marriage, the first place to get started is with your email address. Then you can move on to the rest of your social media accounts. This article specifically covers how to switch your Gmail account name.
Unfortunately, Gmail does not you to change your email address after you create your account. You can change your display name, but your email address must remain the same. Since it’s confusing to have your display name differ from your email address, I recommend creating a new email address.
1. Create a new email address as soon as the rock’s on your finger
There are more than 200 million Gmail users, so chances are, there’s someone out there with your name who’s already snagged the Gmail address. So do away with any silly superstitions and create your new email address ASAP. I remember signing up with Gmail when it was invite only, and I took for granted how easy it was to get firstname.lastname@gmail.com. My married name wasn’t available this way. If yours is taken too, here are some combinations you can try that still look professional:
- lastname.firstname@gmail.com
- firstname.middleinitial.lastname@gmail.com
- firstname.maidenname.lastname@gmail.com (if it’s not too long)
- firstname.middlename.lastname@gmail.com (if it’s not too long)
- firstinitiallastname@gmail.com
If none of those are available, you might have to throw in some numbers. I personally refused to be Diana Urban #2, so I added my middle initial. Remember, with Gmail, you can create the email account with the periods (i.e. diana.urban), and the email address without the initials (i.e. dianaurban) will work as well.
2. Log in once in a while
If your account is inactive for around 9 months, Gmail will delete your shiny new account, and someone else could snatch it up. So make sure you log in once in a while and send an email or two, especially if you have a longer engagement.
3. Forward mail to your new email account
Once your married (congrats!), you’ll want to forward any new messages you receive from your old inbox to your new inbox.
To do this, go to your OLD email account, click the gear icon 
at the top of any Gmail page, choose Mail settings and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. In the Forwarding section, click Add a forwarding address. Follow the steps to complete this process.
4. Import your old emails
Next, import all of your emails from your old account. Unless you’d like to start with a clean slate, but I love being able to look up any past messages, and I’m bad at remembering to log into old email accounts every 9 months.
Click the gear icon at the top of any Gmail page, choose Mail settings and open the Accounts and Import tab. Scroll down to the Check mail using POP3 section and click the Add POP3 email account button. Follow the simple steps to complete this process. Remember to automatically archive and label all of these old messages. This is very important!
If you forget this step, you’ll have to sort/archive possibly thousands of messages, wasting a lot of your time. Once you save your changes, you might have to wait several hours until the process is completed.
5. Import your contacts
If you want to continue using Gmail awesome autocomplete feature so that you don’t have to remember anyone’s actual email address, you’ll need to import all your contacts from your old email account. To do this, go to your OLD email account, and click Contacts in the left navigation. Then click the More dropdown and select Export.
Then export all your contacts (or specific groups if you’d prefer) as a Google CSV file. Save this file to your desktop.
Next, to go to your NEW email account, and click Contacts in the left navigation. Then click the More dropdown and select Import. Upload the Google CSV you just saved to your desktop.
6. Customize your new Gmail account
Now comes the fun part… making your new Gmail account pretty! Here are the items you don’t want to forget:
- Upload your Gmail picture – located under Mail Settings > General
- Write your signature – located under Mail Settings > General
- Get organized with Labels and Filters – located under Mail Settings
- Enable your favorite Gmail Labs – located under Mail Settings > Labs
That’s it! You’re all set with your new Gmail account. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!
Thank you for this- very helpful. Just what I was looking for. Need to change my gmail account name. Look forward to reading more posts. I just came across your blog on copyblogger. I thought I had to create a whole new email addy- what a mission! Enjoy your day. Rochelle.
Thank you so much for this post. It was a great help.
Thanks for the info – helpful except I didn’t realize it would import EVERYTHING – all sent, deleted, etc. I was only going for the inbox email. Would be good to have this noted!
Great article! Thanks for the step-by-step process. I’ve got my new email account all set up now.
how can i change my facebook username to my gmail username so i only have one name because i have a bad memory
Hi Amber,
Just click the little arrow next to “Home” and click “Account Settings.” Then you can edit your email address to your Gmail address, and make it your primary email addrsess for your Facebook account. Hope that helps!
Yet another reason I don’t want to change my name when I get married… I don’t feel like having to change it on absolutely everything. Back in the day it wasn’t a big deal to change your name because we didn’t have Social Security Cards, driver’s licenses, email accounts, etc… Everything is in my current name, why should i have to change everything? I was born with the name I have, and even though I hated it when I was a kid, I realized at some point that people weren’t going to make fun of my name forever. Save yourself the time and hassle and keep your last name ladies. For me, it’s not a matter of some extremist feminism thing, it’s a matter of convenience and wanting to still be my own person.
There is no reason to change name after marriage, man or woman everyone is to be recognized by their family and father’s name. A woman is not to be recognized by her husband’s name. That’s beyond the intellect.
I respect your views and choice but your reason for not changing the name on everything left me wondering, “If changing the name is such an inconvenience, why go through the bigger inconvenience of getting married and telling someone that you do?” I will emphasise again I respect your views and your choice.
Well, it’s not very helpful. I thought this would be instructions for how to change the account name that people see in chat or Google Docs, not instructions for how to create a new email address. The account name I’m referring to isn’t “yourname@example.com,” but the name that appears in the top right corner when you click on your email address.
Hi Torin. That would be an entirely different article; the focus of this particular article is specifically how to change your email address.
To edit the account name, just click the dropdown next to your name at the upper-right side of the screen, click Account. Then click Edit Profile and edit your name there.
Alright. It just has a misleading title, then. Thanks for the help!
an account of my gmail was deleted but I was open a new account by the same username ” Is it possible for me in ever?”
Please my user name change
iam very thankfull to u
Thank you so much!!
Hi just made a new account and used my old name “lynda scott” instead of Linda Arnold how can i change it the email and password are fine its just the account name is wrong “sorry” old habits
Linda Arnold
Soooo helpful, thank you!
On step 4 I am getting this error “Server denied POP3 access for the given username and password.” Do you know why this is happening? It won’t let me import old e-mails.
I am getting the same problem. It says it won’t let me import from another gmail account?
I just went through this… You may have already noticed by now, but check your old gmail. It may be trying to protect your account from being ‘hacked’. At least that was the case for me.
This article was EXTREMELY helpful. I had pretty much given up on trying to ‘merge’ gmail accounts after I changed my name but this proved that it can be done- even if though it took me an hour to do so. (I’m not complaining about your instructions, but the fact that google makes it so difficult to do something that literally took me 2 minutes to do on my hotmail account… grr) Thank you!
I been trying to change my user name for at least one hour following those directions. with no results whatsover can anybody please tell me how to change my name?
thank You
Yes! That is exactly what it was. Would save some headache if it alerts you to that instead of just saying it’s denied. I went back to my old email, saw that they had placed an alert on it in case I wasn’t the one coordinating the action, and once I approved it, I had 10 minutes to go back to the new email and do the process again…successfully this time!
I was actually thinking you would mention how to change the gmail display name and the contact info. I have been looking and failing at searching for an online tutorial on how to change those parts of the gmail account for when one moves and such. I can change the one in the signature but I think gmail uses the mailing address for security questions or shows it on profiles or such so I wanted to change it to the current one. If you are able to be of any help in this regard just email me, thanks!
Thank you Diana. gmail is telling me that I cannot transfer mail from another gmail account. Is this correct?
No, you should be able to import messages from another account using the instructions above.
I recently upgraded my phone and that’s the only way I have internet. I forgot my password for my gmail account so I had to create a new one. How can I change to my new gmail so I can start receiving GodVine ?