Taking an academic pseudonym? I am a senior undergraduate about to publish my first academic paper, and have been thinking about taking an academic pseudonym to make myself easier to identify.

My full name is shared by at least three famous people (including one celebrity and one international athlete), and at least two people inside academia (one of whom works in my field). This is my major reason for wanting to change. In modern academia, it seems online identity/SEO is becoming increasingly important, and I don't want to have to compete for namespace with other people, who are:


more famous than I'll likely ever be; and
already have established careers and goodwill under that name.


Basically, it seems like it could be a real hindrance when trying to get my career off the ground.

I am quite attached to my first name, so I'm thinking about changing my last name only to an ancient variant of it. It's a similar name, but much less common, and it couldn't be mistaken as a misspelling of my real name (think Busher vs Bouchier, or Lombard vs Lambert). I can't find evidence of anyone online using that name, so it seems to solve all the problems mentioned above.

I hope to continue into academia and become a professor, in which case I would publish and be known professionally under the new name.
I'd rather not legally change my name, or have to change my name within my personal life, so it would be a situation of having separate professional and personal names. In the event I don't succeed/continue into academia, I could always just revert to my real name (unlikely that my published work will be relevant anyhow).

I'd like to get advice from you all, especially those of you that use a pseudonym in your academic work. A couple questions I have:


Does this seem like a worthwhile idea?
Could there be any issues with having different legal and professional names in a university IT system?
Should I change my undergrad enrolment to be under my new academic name? How about when applying to postgrad/PhD programs?
If I don't do (3), could/should I get degrees reprinted (once I have an established career) under my academic name, rather than my personal name?
Are there any hairy issues that could arise from this, which I might not have considered?


Thanks!
Complementary to your own suggestions and the ones in the other answers, you could consider creating an ORCID (or of course any other unique researcher/author ID) and using it in all publications. The benefits here:


By adding a unique identifier to your name, the name collisions can be resolved. 
If your change your name at a certain point (e.g., if you decide to change your name as you suggested in the question), the ID will remain the same. Therefore, you even might be able to postpone the decision whether to change your name.
Since you mention online identity and SEO: At least ORCID comes with a profile web site (I am not familiar with other ID systems), where you can add your personal information and even maintain a list of your publications. Usually, a link to this profile is added to the publication, so readers can follow it. As to search engine optimization, I am not expert here but I would guess that the outcome of those algorithms improves if there is a unique ID that groups your contributions together.


Of course, all those ID systems are quite recent and might not be accepted (yet) by the journals and/or researchers in your field. Nevertheless, I would give it a try since it comes at no cost (which I presume won't be the case for changing legal documents).