Using your legal or preferred name

At Airbnb, creating a community where everyone can belong and feel welcome is important. While your legal name helps verify your identity, we allow you to provide  a preferred first name to show publicly on your Airbnb profile. This is intended to let you use the name you go by in everyday life, which may be different from your legal name. Your preferred name will be what’s shown to other Hosts and guests across our app and website – such as on your profile, in reviews, and in messages. 

Know that your legal name may show in some scenarios, such as on tax or insurance documents. If you don’t add a preferred first name, we’ll continue to show your legal first name across the Airbnb app and website. 

If you’re hosting as a business on Airbnb, you can use the preferred name field to reflect the name by which your business is commonly known.

Guidelines for preferred first names

Your preferred first name should be the name your friends or family call you by in everyday life. This may be different from your legal name for several reasons, such as a reflection of gender identity, a variation of your legal name (Kathy instead of Katherine), or a transliterated name.

Your preferred first name should not be a fake name or a name that impersonates another person such as a public figure. It should not include multiple names (e.g, John and Jack Smith). Additionally, you should not include a title (eg, Dr.), or offensive or suggestive words of any kind. Names and other content on Airbnb should also always follow our Content Policy.

For some Hosts – depending on your location and other information you’ve provided to us – you can add a business name as your preferred name. In these cases, you’ll see an option to indicate to us that your preferred name is a business name, which helps us understand how you host.

How to add a preferred first name

To add the name you want to display on your profile: 

You can also add a preferred first name when initially signing up for an Airbnb account, as an option to add in addition to your legal name.