…just don’t call me late for dinner. Ha, ha.
Marriage involves a lot of Big Questions; from whom should I marry, to where will we live, when should we have kids, and so forth. One of the questions, about which my friend Kim wrote a while back (3/6/03, can’t figure out how to link directly), is what the bride will do with her name. (So far the question of what if anything the groom should do with his name hasn’t become a big issue.) This wasn’t a big question for me, I decided a long time ago that if I ever got married I would take my husband’s name. It’s not something I think should be mandatory at all; in fact I like having options and I think it should be a personal choice based on a couple’s individual situation. Of the three of my four bridesmaids who were married, one changed her name, one kept her name, and one hyphenated. I actually added my old last name as a second middle name, for a total of four names; a situation about which I have a small feeling of pride, for reasons which I prefer not to attempt to analyze.
Our name decision was mostly based on my feeling that it would be nice for our family to have the same name. I don’t feel like I’ve given up my identity; I’m still the same old person and I know exactly who that is (perhaps unfortunately). I think one reason that I didn’t feel any qualms about changing my name is that hardly anybody uses my last name. If I had to change my first name it would have been a much bigger deal.
Concerning why our family’s name is my husband’s rather than mine; there’s no particular reason why the chosen name should be the husband’s other than that tradition favors it. That was a good enough reason for me. I think marriage should involve mutual sacrifices, and for me this wasn’t a big one. Other people have other factors to consider when making the name decision, which is perfectly fine with me.
Basically that was Valerie’s reasoning too.
Except that instead of the lovely Linette, she had the also-70s-generic Lynn, which meant nothing to her. So she just dropped it and is now VDC. I briefly thought about doing the same (making it K-D D C), but then my parents said they had really thought a lot about my middle name, and Valerie nixed the idea of Karl-Dieter Stefan Doering Crisman, so I am still K-D S C. Whew!
My original idea was to possibly create a last name ‘de novo’ like Christing or Doerman from our last names, but she just laughed at that one. Oh well. Selfish as I am, I didn’t want to change all my IDs anyway. So there.
KDC