![Would you change your name?]()
What’s in a name?
What’s in a name?My friend hung up the phone and turned to me, “Never change your name if you get married. It’s such a pain to change back when something goes horribly wrong and you have to divorce him.”
I just nodded.
She’d finalized a painful divorce. While enrolled in a 4-year professional program, supporting his worthless butt, she came home to find her husband had been cheating on her the whole time. He didn’t even have the grace to be ashamed of his betrayal.
In that position, I surely wouldn’t want to carry the taint of his name.
When it came time for us to consider the question, I knew that particular issue wouldn’t ever be a problem with PiC. I know you always think you know, but he’s an incredibly stand-up person, husband, father. It’s simply not in him to cheat. Leaving that aside, there are always reasons, and good reasons, for people to dissolve their marriages that aren’t rooted in betrayal.
And likewise, there are good reasons for choosing not to take your spouse’s name when you’re getting married, many of which ring true for me.
“The HisLastName Family” would be easier for people to remember, and most people assume that’s the case, but it wasn’t comfortable or the right fit for me.
First and foremost, I simply wasn’t feeling the love. My first name + his last name didn’t bring the sparrows out of the trees, twittering and singing. I was never that girl who scrawled her name, testing it out with the future prospective husband’s, and that wasn’t just because I didn’t feel that for anyone in those days but also because love didn’t mean a name change to me. Love is many things but it’s not a different name.
I asked PiC if he had an opinion, out of respect for his thoughts but they were the same as mine: it’s my name, it’s my choice. I left it open-ended, assuming that I might choose to change it at a later date but years later, it still feels like the right choice.
This was the name I was born with.
I got married, I wasn’t reborn. I don’t feel reborn in any way. Your mileage may vary, of course this is just about me, and speaking about me? I feel older, I feel like we’re a team, like we have evolved, and grown together. But this marriage didn’t just spring fully formed from Athena’s forehead. We haven’t experienced a rebirth as humans. We knowingly chose to enter into a legal and cultural covenant to fight this life’s fights side by side.
My husband doesn’t need to bestow upon me a new name because we’ve entered into this union any more than I need to bestow a new name on him.
But, (new) faaaaamily??
I know that some people feel that they need to share the same names as a family to be a family. That’s valid, for them.
For me, changing my name would no more make me part of a new family than not changing it would exclude me. Changing my name would unmoor me from who I know I myself as but it would not be in exchange for making me a part of a new family. Those were, and are, completely separate issues: my identity is one, my sense of belonging is another.
I’ll admit the issue gave me pause when we discussed having children. We were aware that there is a way things are usually done, and that people are likely to be confused if our offspring don’t share a name with both of us. But I have faith, people! I have faith that it’s possible for people to wrap their heads around the idea that I have my name, and PiC has his name, and those names don’t make or unmake our relationship to our child.
More seriously, there’s a nice solution that friends have had to the kids and naming question: they take both names. I don’t care at all for the idea that my last name and the last name of any children wouldn’t match and therefore we don’t “appear” to be family – I did so much work so darn it, my kid is going to have my name too. Giving our kid both our names in some way works for me.
But your name is just your dad’s name so Patriarchy still wins!
Sure, it was my dad’s name. But my first name was from my mom. It’s not like I was born with a first name attached and whichever parent appended their name determined whether patriarchy or matriarchy wins. They both gave me a first, middle, last, and non-English name. What I did after that made it mine.
I won awards in my name.
I made mistakes in my name.
I learned life and academic lessons, failed, and tried again, in my name.
I graduated from school in my name.
I established my career and a professional reputation in my name.
(I’ll take credit for my part in keeping our marriage healthy, in my name, but I don’t think the act of getting married is in itself an accomplishment.)
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander
I’m a strong believer in fairness and equality. They don’t always mean the same thing but in this case they do: when getting married these days, there’s no good reason to my mind that only the woman has to consider whether or not to change her name. Aren’t you both getting married? Aren’t you both equally entitled to like your name enough for it to be the family name?
My favorite solution yet was the couple who hyphenated but took each other’s names as the first last name. So she was Mrs. His-Hers and he was Mr. Hers-His. That truly felt like something I might have, were I inclined to hyphenation, felt comfortable doing together. That felt like a family thing to me.
Since PiC likes his name as much as I like mine, neither of us chose to change our names and that felt perfectly fine.
Bonus: I didn’t know this at the time, having never called most of my family members by their last names, but it’s rare for any women in my family to change their names on marrying. It’s apparently the cultural norm not to and it’s one cultural tradition I’m ok with carrying on.