Immigrants in Britain are changing their names to make them easier to pronounce or changing them to everyday British ones according to a newly launched Deed Poll provider who says that 70% of the deed polls that have carried out since launching on September 1st have been from people from ethnic minorities on www.official-deedpolls.co.uk

People of Arabic, Chinese and African origin were the biggest groups to change their names, particularly first names with good old fashioned names like John and Michael and Mary and Olivia being the most popular for the ladies.

Mark Keenan , spokesman for the site, said “ We have been doing change of name deeds for clients on our divorce-online.co.uk website for years but we were very surprised by the number of ethnic minority clients that we have had in the last two weeks since we launched the deed poll site.

The website was launched to challenge local authorities and some of the more expensive deed poll providers who are charging £50 and upwards to provide change of name deeds and copies and then charge extra for postage.

We changed the divorce market in 2000 by introducing online divorce to the UK and now have taken our low cost model to the change of name market.”