How to change your Gmail name

Your Gmail name is what shows up in Google contacts and any emails you send out, displayed next to your email address. You may want to change this to reflect a name change in real life or perhaps you’re handing over that account to a colleague, friend or family member.

Thankfully Google lets you change your Gmail name as often as you want and it’s a surprisingly easy process. You may need to change your Gmail name relatively frequently so it’s welcome that Google gives you the option to do so, but how do you go about doing it?

How to change your Gmail name

The first step to changing your Gmail name is to log into your account at mail.google.com. You’ll then want to navigate to the gear icon in the top right-hand corner of Gmail and click Settings in the dropdown menu. Along the top find the Accounts tab, which lets you change all sorts of details associated with your Gmail account. The ‘Send mail as’ section lets you change the information that is displayed to recipients of your email. This is also handy to help you keep track of any other email addresses you have linked to your Gmail account too.

If you click ‘edit info’ next to the email address you want to send mail as, you can now type what name you would like paired with your Gmail address in the ‘Name:’ section and save your changes. From here you can also treat the address as an alias or send replies to a different email address if you want. Click Save Changes and you should now have a new name associated with your Gmail, so give it a whirl by sending a test email to a friend or another one of your accounts. 

If you’re wanting to change your password or have forgotten it and want to know how to recover your account, we’ve created a handy step-by-step guide on how to change your Gmail password. Also, be sure to read our guides on how to recover your account if your Gmail gets hacked and how to make sure your Gmail account is as secure as possible.