What’s In A Name?
This year both my sister and my cousin Sarah got married. And as happens when you are female, getting married, and living in the American culture, they were each faced with the decision of whether or not to change their last name. One did, and one didn’t, both perfectly valid decisions to my mind. It is, after all, their name, to do with as they wish. And there was no big hullabaloo in the family over either decision; we all just accepted it in both cases, no questions asked. Still, a wedding and a name change (or lack thereof) always makes me wonder what I would do in the same situation.
In my case there is absolutely no urgency in answering this question. While I do hope to one day con a human male into loving me enough to legally bind himself to me in marriage, it won’t be happening any time soon. My brain, however, doesn’t seem to care about that reality and chews on this question with disturbing regularity: would I take my husband’s last name?
The answer used to be absolutely, yes, I would.
Some time under the age of ten I remember realizing that my mother’s last name was not the same as her parents’ last name. This intrigued me because my last name was the same as both of my parents. I vividly remember sitting on the blue carpet in the living room of my childhood home and asking my mother why it was that her last name was not the same as her parents.
“Because when your dad and I got married, I changed my last name to McKay, “ she answered casually.
“So when I get married I can change my last name too?” I asked.
“Yes, you can.”
That was it. Mom didn’t say she changed her name because she was the female, and I didn’t ask why Daddy didn’t change his name. It was just fact: Mom changed her name when she got married, and that meant that I would too.
At the time this was a very exciting prospect to me. McKay is a perfectly fine last name. In fact, it’s fun because it has two capital letters in it which always made me feel a little superior to those who only had one capital letter in their last name. But still, the world of possibilities opened by the fact that I could change my last name when I grew up was enticing. I imagined my new last name in all kinds of forms: something long and hard to spell like my art teacher Mr. Gugliandolo, or maybe it would be something funny like Weiner or Butz. The only thing I dreaded was it being something plain and run of the mill like Jones or Green. That was a name anyone could have, I wanted a cool name.
As I got older and had my first boyfriend I never questioned what would happen if we got married; I knew I would take his last name. He even offered one time to take my last name if we got married, an offer I declined not because I thought it weird for a man to take a woman’s name, but because he wasn’t going to steal from me my right to change my last name. Not when I had been looking forward to it since I found out it was possible.
Time marched on, the boyfriend became an ex, and still I assumed that I would change my last name if ever I got a husband. Then my best friend from college, Monica, got married and didn’t change her last name. Up until that moment, I am a little ashamed to admit, it never even occurred to me to question the practice. Why not change your name? It’s not that I disagreed with Monica’s decision, I just honestly never thought about it. To me it was “what you do” when you got married, just another item to check off the to-do list. But with Monica’s marriage, my thought process began to change in that I actually began to have a thought process about the whole thing.
I began to think, “why should I change my name if I get married?” The fact of it being tradition or “what you do” was no longer sufficient. I needed more reasons.
Would it be necessary to change my name to make my husband and I part of the same family? No, of course not. We’d be a family through action, through love, not through paperwork. Plus, my mom and I didn’t have the same last name and not sharing a name didn’t make us any less connected.
Also, a marriage is not a transfer of property. If I were to get married it would not be my father giving me away and stripping me of his family name to become legally a member of another man’s family and to forever be “his problem now”. Changing my name to that of another man would not make him responsible for or in charge of me. No, no, no, fuck that noise. I am now, and forever shall be, my own damn problem regardless of marital status and surname.
From then on things changed and I was fairly confident in the idea that I would not be changing my name when married if I ever got married at all, having entered my stubborn “I’m going to be single forever and I like it that way, dammit” phase. I couldn’t imagine ever meeting a man who would inspire me to enter the married state, let alone change my name.
But I have found that men come along who make you question your stances on such things. Men so handsome and charming, thoughtful and loving that part of you wants to take their name, just to show the world that you belong together. I mean, who can blame me for day dreaming about being called Mrs. Matt Damon? Obviously we were meant to be and I needed to stake my claim by officially and legally becoming a Damon (assuming, of course, that we met, fell in love, and oh, yeah, that he weren’t already married). I began to classify men in my head, sorting them into categories from “Full on Stalker Level adore him, would take his name and be traded into his care for whatever number of goats I am valued at”, to “Eh, I like him, but wouldn’t take him name”, to “OMG I hope he didn’t see me, tell me when he’s gone”.
These days I’m a little confused on the matter. I’m not sure what to think. While I see no true purpose in changing my name and in general cling to my independence like shit to Velcro, there is also a part of me that still views it as fun or romantic. It’s a potential cool thing that I could get to do, not something I have to do because of tradition or the patriarchy or because I’m trying to escape an unsavory past. It’s a thing that could theoretically make me feel closer to the person that I’m choosing to spend my life with, and I have a hard time seeing that as a bad thing.
But then I also worry what people would think. Not random people I don’t know, who cares what they think? But the people close to me, those who’s opinions matter to me the most…what would they think? Particularly I wonder about the other women in my life. What would my sister say? What about Monica? Gabrielle? My work friends? What about my cousins, Sarah and Abigail, what would they think if I changed my name? If I didn’t? It is too much to bear thinking that I might simultaneously disappoint or delight any or all of these people with this one decision.
Obviously I will have to do what feels right to me when the time comes, as is true for any person in the same situation. A lot of it may depend on how cool my future husband’s last name is. If it’s amusing or sounds funny damn right I’m taking that name, or at least tagging it on the end of my current name. (Never let it be said that I passed up an opportunity to make a joke, even of my own name.) Maybe my husband and I will take on each other’s names and both have two last names. Oh! Or, we could swap last names; that would be a creative solution. I could change my name altogether to something edgy and one word, like Talon or Spree and just not have a last name. If all else fails I could always go the Prince route and go by The Human Formerly Known as Megan.
It’s tough work being a woman, but options abound and the internal debate continues. I will cross this bridge when I come to it and hopefully when the bridgekeeper asks me this particular riddle, I will have an answer that satisfies all parties, not least of all myself.
