I'd like to use "Mel Chua" as my the nom de plume I publish under for academic papers, conferences, and whatnot. How do I check to make sure there aren't any collisions of other people publishing under that name, aside from the obvious IEEE/ACM/Google searches (which haven't found anything yet)?

Mel isn't my legal name, but it's what my friends and colleagues call me, and the name I prefer to be addressed by - and the academic world is ultimately where I want to end up, so I want to make a conscious decision to be called what I want to be called in a community that is important to me (and will likely get more important as time goes on). Whatever name I start publishing under is what I'm likely to continue publishing under for the remainder of my academic life (that is to say, "the remainder of my life").

Is there a way people are supposed to do this?

[0] I might not be using the correct terminology for this.