I Don’t Care What You Say, I’m Taking My Partner’s Name

I incited someone’s wrath the other day, which is hardly something new to be honest, I seem to incite wrath all the time.

What is interesting is what it was that incited the wrath.

Not surprisingly, it was something I said. In particular, it was my wholehearted excitement that when my partner and I ‘joined our houses’ that I would be taking his name.

The effect was immediate.

An icy chill spread through the room, enveloping us both in my terrible mis-step. My conversation partner delivered a very clipped, very curt explanation of just how wrong I was. Apparently, and entirely unbeknownst to myself, I was setting the female gender back by embracing traditional norms.

With opinions like that, I wasn’t just making my life harder, I was also making life harder for my (imaginary) daughter, and my daughter’s daughters. I, singlehandedly, was ensuring that outdated traditions that saw women have their birth identity ‘ripped from them’ would continue into the future.

This was all news to me.

See, my whole reasoning behind taking my partner’s name was to make things easier. Let me explain.

The Name Game

A few months prior to my birth, my mum sat down with my dad to figure out what my surname would be. My mum had a child from a previous relationship, and she wanted to create a sense of unity, without necessarily forcing him (then aged 4 and with no opinion on anything) to give up his heritage. For reasons that I still don’t entirely understand, they decided to ask the aforementioned four-year-old what surname he wanted for himself and his sister. Mum’s name or dad’s name?

Well of course, he said both.

So, when I entered the world in typically spectacular fashion on the 14th of August, I had bestowed upon me a name that was as complex as it was unwieldy. A total of 28 letters in length, separated into four very long names, the last two of which were joined in holy hell by the hyphen. I didn’t know it then, but I was looking down the double-barrel of a lifetime of problems.

It plagued my childhood. I couldn’t even spell the entire thing until I reached the fourth or fifth grade. It’s two spaces too long for almost every form I’ve ever filled out, and it’s a nightmare to spell over the phone.

Then there’s the damn hyphen.

Do you know how many computer systems, online booking forms, airlines and other bureaucratic systems don’t allow hyphens? I do, and it’s a lot.

The problem is when there’s a space instead of a hyphen, it doesn’t match your passport or your license. It’s even worse when there’s no space at all and the whole thing just gets jumbled together in an alphabet soup of chaos.

By adulthood, I was over it. And I was even more over my brother, who put me there in the first place, who changed his name at the first opportunity. Thanks bro.

The Simple Road

My partner’s surname, just to give you a frame of reference, has six letters. Six little letters, so simple, so lovely. Compared to the fourteen letters in my last name (hyphen not included) it’s positively Scandinavian in its minimalism.

When we started making a game plan for engagement and marriage, he asked me if I wanted to keep my name, if he should take mine, or if we should hyphenate. The concept of having three hyphenated names was enough to make me nauseous, and I certainly didn’t want to inflict that on anyone else. So I told him that I wanted to take his last name, no problems at all.

Of course that was before I knew that I was crushing my gender into the dust.

The Problem With Hyphenated Names

The way I see it, the problem with hyphenated names is that they’re kinda destined to be one generation. Someone with a hyphenated name can hardly hyphenate it again, although I’m sure it has been done. At some point, you need to pick and choose the names that matter to you the most, which totally undermines any reason for hyphenating in the first place.

Taking my partner’s name doesn’t bother me because I am more than the sum of my parts.

Yes, a name is part of my identity, but my first and middle names are the names that matter. That’s what people call me, and that’s how I identify myself. I don’t see taking my partner’s name as a cutting away of my past self, I see it as a simplification. I am not defined by my last name any more than I will be defined by my title as a mother, or a sister, or a friend. I am all of those things, and I am still myself.

And I am very much looking forward to spending less time filling out forms!

Have you ever had a problem with your surname? What did you do?