Why do some signers have their names automatically change after signing their contract?

Thank you for your answer and for the link to the article. However, the name change happens independently of what the Recipient enters when they first receive the envelope. Even though the Recipient's full name was entered correctly when I sent the envelope, the Name field on the contract shows "Independent contractor" (or an older spelling of the name in some cases), and the Recipient can't correct the name in the Name block.

I am not sure you are reading the article accurately. When I create a DocuSign Account I can go in and create my standard Signature. This Signature include "Name". No matter what you set as the Recipient Name, when I choose my Signature block to use from my DocuSign Account it updates the "Name" field in the document to the "Name" in the Signature block. Here is how I ran through this a saw a change.

I created an envelope sending to my email address with the Recipient Name of "Test". I added a "Name" field and a Signature field. I sent this and opened the envelope. I then choose my Signature to use in the document and that Signature has a "Name" of David Schmitz, which is what then updates the "Name" field on the document instead of the word "Test". So it is my belief that the Recipient you are sending to has a generic "Name" of "Independent Contractor" in their Signature block. I would imagine to correct the "Name" the DocuSign User would need to go into their DocuSign Account, My Preferences, Signatures, and update the Name associated to their Signature blocks.

We're trying to puzzle this out for ourselves at work as DocuSign is new to us. I have found that if I set the signing order up right and remove the 2nd signature from the document it won't repeat the 1st recipients name again - however, I'm sure that is just a work around and not an answer.

Thanks, I see what you mean! You're saying that if the Recipient has their own "Name" or "Signature" it'll override the Recipient's "Name" that I set when I sent the envelope to them (even if they're not a registered user).

In the past, when the Recipient asks us to change how their name appears in the contract, I enter the new Name when I recreate the envelope and resend it to them, and they're able to sign with the new name without issue. However, on the few occasions that doesn't work, the Recipient has to change their "Name" through their account preferences, right? For example, if Maria wants us to use her company name "Maria DBA Peruvian Taiwan Translations LLC" instead (with the same email address).

Correct, I think it could be considered a drawback of using that type of DocuSign field. Now you could just use a Text field and when you create the envelope (or Template), fill out the Text field for the Recipient when you start a new envelope, also setting the text field to "read-only" so the Recipient cannot change the field. Or do not set "read-only" and the Recipient could change the field as they see fit. Filling out the field for the Recipient is an extra step though in the process but it take out the need to change Account settings and the possibility of the field changing without manual intervention.