What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
— Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

The oft-quoted passage from Shakespeare obscures Romeo & Juliet’s real lesson.  While a rose by any other name may indeed smell equally sweet, I’m not sure that Signores Montague and Capulet fixated on scent.  It was pedigree and genealogy about which they worried, and, to that end, names disclosed and meant quite a bit.

Names come to define and signify us.  More than just labels, they also become laden with emotion, identifying information, and meaning; giving up a name means forfeiting a portion of our identity.  People have come to know me as my name, and to know my name as me.  I wasn’t willing to give that up when I took my vows, and I didn’t expect that Aimee would be any happier to either.

Our Story
As loyal AYMB readers, you already know the punchline: When we married, Aimee took my last name, jettisoning her birth middle name and replacing it with her maiden name, sans hyphen.  This decision — one that she drove, but that we made together — flew in the face of our liberal upbringings, education, and beliefs.  That my partner would tend the house and children, while I tended to our income seemed just as crazy as the prospect that my partner would bear my name like a possessive.  Fast forward a half-dozen years, and both have occurred.   I joke that we’re the accidental traditionalists.

To be clear, I never asked Aimee to change her name, nor would I have asked.  I imagined that she would either keep her maiden name or hyphenate our names together.  We both found distasteful the concept of a woman giving up her name in order to take her husband’s. (Let’s shamefully assume heterosexuality here.)  It’s an unfortunate tradition that smacks of uglier times when women were treated like property, and when their parents (read: fathers) bartered them into marriage.  But, as Churchill famously said about democracy (it being the worst possible form of government…except for all the others), we found name-changing to be the worst possible and least likable option, besides all the others.

The Alternatives
So, what options are there?  Well, the obvious alternative is for wives to keep their maiden names.  I was fine with this.  But Aimee wanted to have the same name as her children.  (Again, traditionalism sneaks in.  Even as we were open-minded about name-changing, we just assumed that my name would pass on to our children.)

How about hyphenating?  Not a bad alternative, we thought.  But what if we hyphenated the kids’ names, too, and then they married hyphenated kids?  Four surnames?  And then what if their kids married four-surname kids?  The prospect of exponential hyphenation seemed silly and simply impracticable.

How about I take Aimee’s name?  It wasn’t something I wanted consider.  Besides that people knew me by my last name, that name is so rare that my brother and I are the only males (assuming our female cousins cling to tradition) potentially to pass it on.  I couldn’t countenance a situation in which my family name would disappear in a generation.  “Hypocrite!,” you shout.  No, not at all. That I so vehemently opposed giving up my name only made me anticipate and accept that Aimee likely would would not give up hers.  (That she ultimately did shows the power of tradition as tie-breaker.)

How about the clever and trending practice of merging names into a new one?  This also has the added attraction of having both parents share their name with their children.  But for all the equity in this approach, it also doubles the “harm” of name-changing:  Now two people would be cleaved from their past identities; two family names would stop being passed to future generations.

Because we both found ourselves early in our careers, we did not much consider the option of using a maiden name for professional reasons and a married name for personal reasons.  That practical option allows the wife to preserve her past identity (somewhat), while also allowing children to have the same (legal) name as their mothers.  But it also plays right into tradition, again, by assuming that children should take on their fathers’ names.  Worse, it prevents children from being associated with their mothers’ professional successes.

‘Til Death Do Us Part
So there we were as newlyweds, two feminists fully aware of the irony of Aimee taking on my name.  We realized it was an imperfect choice, but accepted it as the least imperfect (for us) of the alternatives.  By making her maiden name into her middle name, Aimee honored her family heritage while also preserving her past identity.  By taking my name, though, her family name will not continue down our branch of the family tree.  That is regrettable.

Each couple needs to choose the option that works best for it, hopefully honoring the wishes of the bride (who so often is the one most affected by it).  Our own decision has worked well for us.  We just thank our lucky stars that my name was not Montague…

I took my husband’s last name.

The Dude never asked me to take his name, nor did he assume I would. After we got engaged, I had a full year to think about whether or not I would change my name. It was a good thing I had that kind of time since it took me about a full year to come to my decision. I went back and forth quite a bit but, in the end, I decided that taking his last name was the best thing to do for logistical purposes. It didn’t matter to me whether or not I shared the same surname as the Dude, but I did want the same surname as our future children.

These days, it’s not necessarily expected for women to take a husband’s last name. I know plenty of wives that never took their husband’s last name and I know plenty more that hyphenated the two surnames together. Some couples are getting creative with sharing a family name. I know couples who adopted both surnames and then hyphenated while others simply combined the last names to create a new name. I’ve even known a few husbands who took the last name of their wife.

As appealing as some of these options were, none of them really seemed like the ideal fit. The Dude liked his name and, considering where he was in his law career, it would have been difficult for him to make a name change. Although I had an established career of my own for many years, I was about to embark in a whole new direction shortly after the wedding.  A few months before I got married, I had quit my job in preparation of starting another graduate program and a new career. From that perspective, changing my name was not going to be  a problem. I figured if I was going to change my name, there was no better time. It would be a fresh start with everything: new name, new career, and new husband. What’s the big deal about giving up my surname. It’s just a name. Right?

Not really.

I didn’t realize how attached I was to my name until I actually changed it. I decided to keep my maiden name as my new middle name, a strategy that I figured was just as good. It wasn’t. It was one of the biggest adjustments of my life. How do you just go from being one name to another, especially after nearly 30 years? I felt like I had become a new person and, in many ways, I was a new person. I had a new name, a new husband, and I was about to start a new career. At the same time that I gained a new husband and family, I also never felt so lost in my life. I was no longer the single and career-focused Aimee. I was the married and jobless Mrs. Aimee.

What made matters worse was that shortly after I received my new social security card and drivers license, I was the victim of real identity theft.  A woman who had a fake drivers license with my former name on it went to my bank and started cashing fraudulent checks and withdrawing money. The fake Aimee did this a number of times before she was caught. I would get phone calls from the bank saying ” we spotted the fake Aimee at this bank in Florida”  or “we now have the fake Aimee on video from a bank in Oregon.” It was surreal, to say the least. I gave up my former identity, only for it to be used by a thief. When she was finally caught, I felt a huge relief and not just because a criminal was going to be brought to  justice. I felt relief because in order for me to fully let go of the former Aimee, I needed her to quit robbing banks so I could put her to rest. If I wasn’t going to use the name anymore, no one else could either. Especially for criminal activity.

I’ve grown accustomed to my new last name. For me, it’s much more meaningful to share a name with my husband and child than to hold on to a name given to me at birth. I am still attached to my former surname and I’m glad I choose to keep it as part of my full legal name. However, my surname did not truly identify who I am and the new name doesn’t change that either. In the end, it really is a just a name. A label of sorts. Of course, sharing a name with my husband and child is also a label. It labels us as a family, a family I chose to be a part of and help create. That reason alone makes a name change worth all the money in the bank.