James Gatz – that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career – when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6. Nick explains how the poor teenage Jay Gatz was reborn into the sauve and mysterious Jay Gatsby on his way to wealth.