What's in a name, and other random musings

[azurelunatic]

4:00 PM 4/11/2010
Called best friend for just over a half-hour. Some determined punning and a lot of comfortable silences later, I'm feeling much more myself. Could have done without the terrible static, however!

9:31 AM 4/12/2010
It was actually sort of uncanny. I was sitting there on the phone with him and I could feel the crippling depression sliding away. He resets me. Not a full, back-to-drawing-board reset, but back into balance.

4:18 PM 4/12/2010
I'm trying very hard to remain awake until a reasonable bedtime, so maybe I can be back at diurnal. It seems to take all my energy to push myself back into alignment.

6:55 PM 4/12/2010
Today MissKat had to reassure stonebridge that he did not remind her of a whale penis. (Or, I assume, an orca penis.)

8:25 AM 4/13/2010
A friend had a bit of a rant on the topic of a woman changing her name upon marriage -- in some cases, her whole previous identity goes up *poof*. The naming of people is serious business, especially in the internet age, where your name is not just what people call you, but where you are, how people recognize you as yourself, and of course your clan identity. On Facebook, if you don't include previous names of yours, people who knew you then may not be able to find you. (Note that this isn't always a *bad* thing.) But continuity of identity is an important thing that one doesn't generally brush aside lightly, and if the name is a major component of your identifiable self...

And I looked at that rant and realized that actually I was not as averse to changing my name upon marriage as I had been in 2000. If I got married to someone and I liked their surname and family, I would happily change mine. That shocked me to no end. Why? What had changed?

In the comments, there were stories about women who had changed their names at the beginnings of their careers, and women who had declined to change their names while their careers were in full swing: women whose names were their brands, women who would not and could not and chose not to weather the problems of changing a name, changing a brand, when they'd already invested so much time and energy into being and promoting that name.

I haven't invested that much identity and worth into my surname in the last decade. Since moving onto the internet, I have been fully inhabiting this name instead.

I tried on the idea. If I was planning to get married, and my spouse-to-be tried to insist that I had to change my username after getting married? My response was immediate and furious. "...first they'd see my middle finger, then they'd see my naked ring finger, then they'd see the outside of my door. This is my name and it is not negotiable."

5:01 PM 4/14/2010
Enjoyed a dip in the hot tub for the first time in far too long. Sadly, it was more of a swimming temperature than a hot-tubbing temperature. Embarking on Yet Another Dan Simmons Adventure: this time it's Ilium.

Cautiously thinking that diurnal may be back for a while.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I &hearts &hearts &hearts my surname. There is no better surname in all the land than mine. I have no expectations of ever getting married but if I did, s/he would be utterly welcome to change their name to mine if they so desire after all, it is the best in all the land but I will not be changing mine.

[juliet]

The fundamental issue I have with the name-changing thing is that it's the woman who is expected to do the changing of name. Sure, I do have friends who have done other things (double-barrelled, or in one case the man taken the woman's name), but even in my fairly feminist circles, they're in the minority by quite a long way. And the *expectation* is still otherwise; & in particular, the man taking the woman's name is INCREDIBLY rare.

When woman-changing-her-name is just one option, taken about as often as any other option, then I'll stop getting wound up about the sexism of it.

[cesy]

I quite like my surname. It is annoying when companies can't cope with it, but it is a cool name, because it is unusual and has a story behind it.

[triadruid]

We're either both changing our names (hyphenation, with mine first only because it avoids an "*r-R*" problem), or neither are.

Neither of us had any inclination to change our names in my first marriage; but my first wife is an artists whose name is both unique and part of her public knowledge.

[triadruid]

Ugh. The end of that should say "my first wife is an artist whose name is both unique and part of her public image."

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

If I weren't so fond of my last name, I probably would be more open to name-changing. My last name is pretty boss, you know?

If I ever do change my name, it's much more likely that I'd add my mother's maiden name as a second middle name. I've been considering that a lot recently.

[warsop.livejournal.com]

I've had a strange relationship with my name. I was born as Firstname Middlename Lastname0. Firstname is shared with my maternal grandmother, Middlename is shared with my paternal grandmother. I never liked Firstname; it's an Old Lady's Name. I toyed with using Middlename as my name on and off throughout my school years. I made the decision in high school to stop using Firstname, and fully moved over to using Middlename when I started university.

Then I got married, whereupon I took my then-husband's surname and legally became Firstname Middlename Lastname1, but everyone knew me as Middlename Lastname1. I was only 20, and from the Midwest, so taking his name was What Was Done. The name lasted much longer than the marriage. All three of my degrees are in that name, and I established my career and reputation as Middlename Lastname1. I began using only Middlename Lastname1 as much as I could manage -- only my driving license and passport showed the full legal Firstname Middlename Lastname1, even my banking accounts and paystubs only had Middlename Lastname1.

When the divorce finally came through, I decided to keep using Middlename Lastname1. I felt like I had invested too much into the name. Additionally, I had moved across the country long before the divorce was final, and very few people in my new post-evil-ex life knew about my ill-fated first marriage. I didn't want to deal with the time and expense of changing names, and the emotional cost of having to explain the revision back to Middlename Lastname0. Over time, I became at least mostly comfortable with this state of affairs: the ex is evil, and I dislike any reminders of him, but time and repetition bred enough familiarity that the name was mine and didn't have reminders of him.

But then the boy came along, and we finally decided to get married after being together for seven years (a direct result of my feeling so burnt by the evil ex), which meant the name issue came up again. He told me that the decision was mine and mine alone -- he would be happy and proud to share a surname with me, but also had no issues if I decided to do something else. I came to a decision about my name: to take one that I felt was mine and mine alone, that was owned by me and that I chose for me.

As such, I legally changed my name. Firstname is gone, never to be seen again. Middlename is now my first name, and I took my husband's surname. I considered options for a new middle name (Lastname0? some other family name?) but ultimately decided against it because I didn't have an attachment to any of the options I came up with.

It probably helps that Middlename is uncommon, both the name and its spelling. There are only a handful of others out there with my name, and I've probably received email for all of them because I always snatch up "middlename" as a username or email address when the opportunity presents itself. Most of my identity is wrapped up in Middlename, and surname is much less important to me. I had a weird encounter in Starbucks yesterday where there was another Middlename there, although she uses the lesser spelling. (Yes, I do think that my spelling is superior in every way possible. ;)

Which is all a very long way of saying that the name you know me by will identify when you met me.
Firstname Lastname0 - up to age 16
Middlename Lastname0 - age 16 through 20
Middlename Lastname1 - 20-33 (the name lasted 13 years, the marriage itself legally lasted 5 years (but we were permanently separated after 2 years))
Middlename Lastname2 - 33-now

(Well, that was longer than I intended, and probably much more detail than anyone could ever care about. :)