I am thinking about taking Shawn's last name. We have been married eight (or maybe nine, I always forget) years now so I am a little slow about taking this into consideration but it was something I never wanted to do before. It's not like I need to convince him I mean to stick around. I do. And he's one of those types of people who doesn't really suffer from that kind of uncertainty anyway.
The fact I never changed my name is more a reflection of laziness than anything because it takes a concerted effort to gather up all the right documents for this kind of undertaking and I am not the kind of person who has any idea where my birth certificate might be. Then there are all these other things that have to change too... the drivers' license, the credit cards, the employment records, the bank accounts...
The fact that it also costs money to be this irritated is further deterrent and when I combine that with the fact that my husband doesn't have a supercool last name like Woodcock or Jactation or Esperanto there just has not been enough of a motivator to make the effort. I would like to add other intelligent feminist arguments to this but in all honesty I can't. It's a patriarchal tradition either way - it's just a matter of whose property I want to be, my father's or my husband's. For me, it is not about these things. It is only about inertia, the awesome power of inertia.
So I am not sure what makes me think I should be considering this now. Maybe I'm just looking for things to think about to keep me from having to write that paper.
*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I've never bothered to change my last name either and it's been almost 29 years (Oh My God!). Pure laziness and, as you say, lack of a cool last name by my husband.
Wow, 29 years. I think you've just talked me out of it. Why bother, right?
Jactation?
I firmly believe in women keeping their own identity despite marriage, although I am of a generation for which that was so unusual that it didn't occur to me. I also have unhappy associations with my family name, and before I married Flip, (whose name I use,) I invented one for myself which I used for years, illegally. In fact, since I married Flip with that name, I suspect that our 18-year marriage is probably not legal as he is married to a woman who does not exist. But it's ridiculously irrelevant.
Yeah, I liked the sound of it when I said it out loud to myself (I also liked the quizzical look on my husband's face when I suddenly announced "Jactation!" apropos of nothing). But now I've tasted it a couple more times and I like it less. I'm sticking with Esperanto, though. That would be a cool name.
How brilliant that you made up a name for yourself. I love that, I love it. And I know your blog is about more global things than the me-me-me kind of stuff I write here - but next time you are in the writing mood and don't know what to write about please please please tell the whole story of changing your name. If you take requests, that is. xx
Post a Comment