It's our names that we first learn to respond to, write, and identify with so it makes sense that they would mean so much. Maybe it was just me and a few friends but I think many children get to an age where they begin to question the names their parents gave them. I, personally, at the age of nine or ten didn't particularly feel like my name quite suited me. The name Isabella was the name that my ten year old self would have chosen given the option. However, over the years I grew into and really began to appreciate my name and feel it's beauty. Still, when I first had to say, "Hello, this is Denise" when I answered the phone my name felt newly foreign. Though I had grown accustom to hearing my name, actually saying it over and over felt strange and was totally new to me. Now, after two years of repeating it countless times a day, it comes as naturally as wiggling my toes.
Maybe it was just like that for me. Perhaps I just have a strange sensitivity to the meaning and feeling within a name. Just so much of my identity feels tied to it after twenty six years. Since college, I contemplated what I'd do with my name once I married. In so many ways, changing your name to your husband's can carry with it a new identity. You are no longer Jessica Stevens. You're now Jessica Joyce, a brand new person. For some, I think it comes naturally. Maybe they look at acquiring a new name the way some look at ringing in a new year: full of hope and possibility. They are now one with their husband and no longer alone.
For me, even as a young girl I never quite enjoyed the notion of taking my husband's name. I guess I just didn't understand it. Why did we have to change our names but they didn't? What if our last name was better than theirs? Still, as I got older I understood the ancient history behind it where a woman was nothing more than property passed from the father to the husband. Though no longer viewed like that in today's society, the tradition stuck and I found myself scribbling my first name with multiple boys' last names throughout high school trying to get used to the idea that one day my name could very well be theirs.
When I got into college, I met some incredible professors who decided to not take their husband's name. Though they married, they kept their own last name. After all, they did achieve doctorate degrees under their birth name and the name on the degree doesn't change when you married. Thinking that I too would have attained at least a masters degree by the time I married understood this and began to question whether or not I'd change my name at all. At the time, my college boyfriend and I were very different people and though I loved him a great deal I always saw myself entirely separate from him.
After dating Dave (my current fiance) for a year, I began to dislike the whole concept keeping my name when I married. It was like though we may have different personalities, hobbies, fears, and talents I couldn't shake the feeling that we were connected. Our personalities, hobbies, strengths, weakness, and talents seemed to weave us together like a blanket of red and blue that from far away looks purple. Keeping my birth name with him keeping his didn't seem like enough to me anymore. What if we have children? Who's name would they take? If they took his, would feel like an outsider with my own family? Would I correct my child's friends who call me Mrs. Husband's Last name? If he took my name, would he feel like the interloper?
Though we had briefly discussed this topic while we were dating, it became something that really needed to be considered once we got engaged. It was suddenly not something I could contemplate. As soon as we set the date, it became the day of reckoning. I would have to choose what I would be called for the rest of my life. Though, I no longer embraced the idea of us each keeping our own last name, I still had an issue with taking his. It didn't help that my first name with his last name didn't flow quite right. I wouldn't be "Julia Gulia" but it just didn't seem to "fit." Traditionalists insist that they don't hear the strange "sssss" sound that happens when I say it, but I do. A few close friends also admitted it as well.
More than just the sound of my name, I still felt dissension amongst my convictions that I should just take his name. My old questions popped up: Why do I have to be the one who changes? Luckily, I have a man who is more than understanding. He listened to me trying to piece it together aloud even as I sometimes made sweeping, completely untrue and bitter statements like, "well I guess I have to sacrifice all my individualism while you don't have to change at all..." Listening to me, we even tossed around the idea that he would take mine. But then he seemed to have as big an issue with that as I did taking his. My name isn't conducive to hyphenation either so that was out.
Finally after months going back and forth always leaving one of us more the slightly dissatisfied, we stumbled upon a new way to combine our names. We put the beginning part of my name and his full last name together and something just seemed to click. It worked and the more we thought about the more it grew on us. In getting married, I am not joining his family nor is he joining mine but we are bringing both families together. In doing so we are creating what Meg over at A Practical Wedding calls a baby family and it makes sense to us that we combine our two family names. Of course, I think deep down Dave would prefer me to take his name because he is a traditionalist but he likes this idea better than the alternatives or me feeling forever disconnected to my own name.
Not everyone agrees or finds our decision tasteful. My father and his mother have both verbalized their dislike of this particular option and as a result we faced what would be our very first extended family crisis this past summer when we announced it as a potential idea. I completely understand where they are coming from but in the end, it's our decision. It's the name that each of us will have to live with so it's best that we are both happy with it. I have nothing against women taking their husbands' names and who knows maybe with some other guy and a different relationship dynamic I would feel that option more for myself. I am just extremely grateful to have a man who not only understands but is willing to make that compromise for me.
Well, this turned into a far longer post and it wasn't what I intended to discuss at all but now is as good as any. Though I do have more than an inkling that this topic will probably come up again in the not so distant future. Maybe after Dave reads this and decides that he actually hates this idea.
Hi! Nope, still interested and I don't hate the idea at all!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do want to point out that the reason I would rather you take my name has nothing to do with me being a traditionalist.
I simply don't want to go to through the process of changing the name. More specifically, managing people who knew me as my original name and then people who meet me after the name change. Also, my entire online presence is based around my current last name! Eek! GEEK!