Well, it's happened. You met the love of your life, you had the wedding of your dreams, and now it's time to sign the license and make it official. But wait--how do you sign? What name will you use?
Thankfully, most to-be-married couples decide this sooner than the actual wedding day, but for many couples the decision of what to be called is a major one. And it doesn't help that there are so many options: Does she take his? Does he take hers? Do they keep their own? Do they hyphenate? Do they combine their names into some new, joint name? How does anyone know what to do?
In my opinion, though, there really shouldn't be any debate. Joining to another person in marriage means that you are committing to building a life with them, and I think that if someone doesn't change their name to take their spouses, that person is basically saying "Yeah, I want to marry you, but I don't totally want to commit." Sure, I understand the situations where one spouse (generally the wife) has a well-established career and wants to keep her name for professional reasons. That logic I can get behind. But I think it could still cause a little discord if the couple decides to have children, because then what name do you give the child? How do you explain to a five-year-old why Mommy has a different name than the rest of the family? And don't even get me started on hyphenating--cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me.
But lately, I've been finding articles encouraging women to keep their own name--not because it makes sense professionally, but because it won't cause them to give up their identity. To this I say--are you serious? Taking my husband's name when I got married was not "giving up my identity". Rather, it was making the decision to take on a new identity--that of Darrell's wife. And changing my name was a way of showing that I was committing fully to that role--not in the 1950s sense of being a wife, but in the "I am promising to be with you for the rest of my life because we are now a family and a team" sense of being a wife. Imagine if baseball players always keep the "name" of the first team that they played on. How ridiculous would that be? Every game would look like an All-Star game because you'd have people with all different jerseys playing for the same team.
Okay, so maybe the baseball example is a little bit of a stretch. But it kind of works. And although Darrell and I never really debated what our name would be when we got married, this statement sums up my opinion perfectly: The name I had growing up was the name of the man my mother chose, so it's only logical that after marrying I would take the name of the man I chose.
Now, I know that with all the non-traditional families out there some people probably can't use that logic, but I think that regardless of what your name is prior to married, and who that name came from, it would only make sense to take the name of person you are choosing to be with. If you just can't bear to let that part of your identity go, then make your maiden name your middle name or something. But honestly, I always raise an eyebrow when I see married couples listed as "Mr. X and Mrs. Y." I feel like it's a cop-out; it's like saying "yeah, we want to be together, but we're not quite enough of a team to take the same last name."
Yes, changing your name is a pain in the ass, and yes, we just celebrated our one-year anniversary and I've still got a few places left to update with my name change, but it's totally worth it. It's worth it to know that when people see my name with Darrell's name that they'll know we're a team, we're a couple, we're committed. And we should be--because if we didn't feel that way then we shouldn't have gotten married. It's not about women's rights, it's not about "losing" your identity--it's about committing to be someone's partner, to be a player on their team, to be with them for the rest of your life.
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