Names, Again?!?!?!

So my honey and I had a round-about slightly too emotional debate about names again. He's cool with whatever I want to do, and the debate wasn't actually about us, but rather about the practice of taking your husband's name in general. Up until recently (see below), there wasn't even a spot on marriage certificates for the husband to change his name. This is, unfortunately, extremely close-minded and totally American. When I looked at the practices of other countries, I found that women usually keep their last name, take both names, or even combine names. In Japan, if the woman is the last of her line or if the son is a second son, the man will take his wife's name. My honey's uncomfortableness stemmed from the idea that a man taking his wife's name wasn't "normal", but when you look around you can see that what's normal is different for different people.

I don't actually want my honey to take my last name, but I do want him to acknowledge that it's perfectly reasonable for a guy to take his girl's name instead of vice versa. The history of marriage is based on change, most of the practices we associate with marriage today are only from the past 50-100 years. It used to be totally normal for an old man to marry an 11 year old, or for a woman to literally be sold to her husband. Now we're on the cusp of gay marriage, marriage is changing again and it only makes sense that naming practices should change with it. In fact, there was a measure on the ballot in California for marriage licenses to include a spot for the man to change his name that recently passed and I'm sure it will be perfectly normal for naming to go either way in another 50 years.

In addition, there's a weird sort of perception surrounding name changing or not. In a recent article by Catherine Rampell in the New York Times, a group of Dutch researchers found that women who change their name when they marry make nearly $400,000 less over their lifetimes than women who do not. They are also viewed as older, less educated, and unmotivated compared to women who don't change their names. While I feel like this study isn't entirely accurate, it does make me feel bad about the whole name changing thing. I hope that any lingering perception about whether a woman changes her name or doesn't will also be a thing of the past given enough time.

For me personally, an accidental indirect interaction with my charming sperm donor has just made the naming debate a whole lot easier. I think I'm finally ready to say "I do" to my honey's last name and "don't let the door hit you on the ass" to my sperm donor's last name. It won't be because I want to be an old, unintelligent, uneducated poor woman, but rather because I've reached the point where I'm ready to entirely distance myself from my father's family.

What's In A Name?

I am really really conflicted about this whole taking your husband's name business. Do I take his? Does he take mine? Do I hyphenate? Add on? Do we both hyphenate or add on? A lot of people feel very strongly about what I see as a fairly personal decision. Strangely enough, I don't want my last name carried on. My father, or sperm donor, is an nut job who plays absolutely no role in my life. My brother has only daughters, so in theory the name should die out. However, for some reason changing my name just doesn't sit right with me. When my parents got divorced, I gave serious thought to changing my name to my mothers maiden name. I had no ties to my father's name and would be happy to join my mothers family. But doing so would make things very tricky. I was applying to high school, then applying to college, and changing my name would have caused major issues with transcripts and documents. In the end, it was just too much work and my name stayed the same.

Now, as I'm applying to medical school, I feel like I'm confronted with the same issue. My maiden name is on all my transcripts, and believe me there's a lot of them. Since I'm getting married before grad school, does that mean my honey's name would be on my medical degree? That sits a little weird with me, I feel like the degree I've worked my whole life towards should have my name on it, while at the same time not wanting my name at all. And what if something happens? If my medical degree says Dr. MyNameHisName, what would it be like to practice as Dr. MyName if we ever broke up? I feel like after 8 years I should have a pretty good handle on being called Mrs. HisName or Dr. HisName but it just doesn't feel like me. I love my honey and I want to be a unified family "The X's" (Maybe I should have picked better letters...), but I just don't want to give up my name.

And what about children? They'd be our children, so shouldn't they share "our" name, not just his or mine? I definitely want to have the same name as my children, but I know my honey absolutely does not want them hyphenated. Although our name hyphenates perfectly, mine is a medium length and his is short, ******-****, I wouldn't want to saddle my kids with a long collection of names. What if they want to hyphenate when they get married? I wouldn't want them to be Name X-Y-A. Or even worse, if they married someone with a hyphenated name Child X-Y-A-B. Can you imagine what they would name their kids?

And really, how archaic can we be? I am not a piece of property passing from one household to another. He should not ask me to do something he's not willing to do himself. So do we both hyphenate? Does anyone really use the hyphenated names or does the first one get left off? Should I have him start calling me Mrs. HisName to see if it's just something I have to get used to? I definitely don't want him to take my last name exclusively, but maybe he could add it as a second middle name? Maybe we both could? He would like me to take his name, but I don't think he feels particularly strongly about it.

I just don't know. For me, this is a conundrum.