Actually, when our forefathers came to British Singapore, the
brit administrators and bosses prefer to call them by their
comprehension of english - romanised characters. Thus, Li became
Lee, Chen became Tan or Chan. Even as I write, i am using romanised
characters based on Hanyu Pinyin which was a later developement in
the early 19th Century.
In time, some of our forefathers who had the opportunity to
study and got to work with brit administrators, romanised
characters took root and was used for official documents, till
today.
But during that brit period, many of our forefathers were
christianised, and in Christianity, when one is reborn thru the
baptism, he/she takes on a new name. Rather than to change our
ancient heritage and valuable sirnames, we simply adopt a
'christian name' together with our chinese name, eg:- Tan Seng Kong
became Charles Tan Seng Kong, and officially recognised in the land
and to everyone.
But in our modern times, the use of christian names is one of
ease, regardless if one is christian or not. I will not go into the
debate on religion and hope no one else does, for it is NOT the
topic of this thread.
Rather, it is how to adopt a christian name over a legal name.
If one requires it for documentation purposes, then by all means go
thru the hassle of getting lawyers to legalise it.
But if it is only for ease, just introduce yourself to anyone as
'Hi, my name is Randy Lee", or "Hi, I am Lee Seng Kong, but you can
call me Randy". There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Saves
you time, effort and money.
However, if you are dealing with the authorities, best use the
name on your IC, such as driving centres, HDB, PUB, etc. When
dealing with companies, you can add Randy to your name, managers
would prefer that ease than to call you by your full name, but make
sure that when they sign your paycheck, to remove the Randy or you
wont be getting your pay, as Randy doesnt appear on your IC and
bank accounts.