Fairy Queen Bee Torture!
First, I love that you love the new theme!!
Second.
My first name is a name I adore. Melissa.
It’s normal but not super common, it has a fun literary past and I like the sound of it.
And my middle is great because it might mean “torture” and I find that super fun.
My last name has gone through a few changes, though. I feel disconnected to all of them now and I have been pondering a decision lately.
I hadn’t thought about my last name throughout this awful divorce business. AT ALL. That is, until my mom called me one day and asked, “What are you doing with your name?”
Huh? Oh.
Fuck.
I didn’t know. I have had my husband’s name for nine years, my degrees and professional life are with this name. And yet, people (ha! women.) change their name all the time. The world magically continues.
So, my list of surnames are this: Maiden Name, First Husband and Children’s Name, Soon to Be Ex Husband’s Name.
What do you go with?
Mike and I have no children together, I have an iffy connection to his family, and I have no real reason to keep it. I will not go back to my first husband’s name, even though it’s the boys’ name because that just feels WEIRD and in ten years or less, the boys won’t even be at home AND they’ve never remembered me with their last name.
But I asked the boys how they felt about it anyway. I wanted to see their reactions and think about if I really needed to upset their world. Again.
Brett’s response, “I don’t get why you EVER changed your name. I mean, that was YOUR NAME!”
Oh. Huh.
Except at 18 when I was newly a mother and contemplating marriage with the baby-daddy, I didn’t feel particularly close to my father and his generic sounding, common name. And being so young, not being married but with a little boy, there was something to having a unified family name. Something attractive.
I fundamentally hate the notion of women being the only ones who change their names and I have known men who have changed theirs, but of course that’s rare. I hate the property connotation and having worked in geneological history as necessary for my master’s thesis related to portraits, I saw that wealthy women did NOT change their name throughout American (St. Louis) history. Neither do most celebrities. So “important” women don’t change it and that is fascinating to me.
However, name-changing is one of the few things gay couples can do to establish publically that they are family.
That unifying name change I did back when Daniel was seven months old lasted about three years. I divorced. And married again. At that time, I couldn’t see keeping Ex’s name when I was currently married.
Sigh. The drama now continues.
Hey! Did you know that if you marry the second time under the age of 25 that you have an awesome chance of second divorce? Awesome!
And hey! Did you also know that “It’s better for your relationship to be educated, religious, living in a good neighborhood, from a two parent home, and never raped, and have no children.”
Fucking duh. Did you know it’s always better for you never to be raped? I did.
Er, yes, names.
So now I have a name issue and I think I’m going to go all the way back to my maiden name. I flirted with going to my Grandma’s maiden name, it’s more ethnic and tells a story. But it feels forced and unnatural a bit since I’ve never used it. And it’s maybe too alliterative with my first name.
My maiden name is easy to spell, common, and it was mine regardless of my relationship with my dad then or now (better now).
As one of the boys put it, “You get to match Ashley!!”
I do.
Posted by Melissa on June 11th, 2007 under Melancholia, Spawn
June 11th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
I never liked my maiden name and also, I liked the sound of my ex’s last name…but I haven’t officially changed it and am still hyphenated. It’s a tortuous amount of paperwork!
June 11th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Whao wha wee wha! Love the new look Sis! Anywhooooo, I really do like the thought of you having Grandma’s maiden name. It would sound very starlet like. Very 1940’s sexy. I actually dig that. Sounds really good together and you always remind me of her. Very independent and mean when you need to be, ha ha! I love that about you both! Much love from the North side!!
June 12th, 2007 at 10:30 am
How about “Bond. Melissa Bond.”???
I, too, love your new background!
June 12th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I actually love the idea of celebrating a new chapter by taking your grandma’s maiden name. It’s kind of like a super honoring our foremothers thing.
I always daydreamed about taking my mom’s maiden name… but now I’m glad I took my husband’s and I “match” my daughter.
June 12th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
We have name issues. We both hyphenated both names together for purposes of legal marriage but we regretted it pretty quickly when we realized some computers fail to recognize hyphens and many humans fail to recognize the first letter of our last name.
Adopting kids made us realize that we were giving them the same burden and they had already so low on options, it seemed like it made sense to change it for their convenience. We will be doing that, after the second adoption is finalized, but now all of a sudden I am feeling a small amount of grief over giving up my family name. But my brother is carrying it on with his four Mormon children, who will very likely breed many more in the same name.
And then a completely new name creates issues about people being unable to find you if they get nostalgic for the past and questions about whether I want anyone from my past looking me up. That’s a big ol’ depends. And I do not mean the adult diaper but I might some day.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I didn’t change my name when I got married, for professional and personal reasons. Professionally, I was fairly well known by the time I got married at 36. The personal reasons are mostly political, gender equality ones. I wasn’t terribly close to my father either, but regardless of whether it was his name, as your son says, it was MY name. Over the course of my life, I had made it mine and saw no reason to change it.
So, pick the name that you feel the most comfortable with. Sounds like your kids will be fine with whatever you decide..
June 13th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Could you make up your own last name? Like Ucello or something?
June 15th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
FWIW……………..
You could always give your CHILDREN a hyphenated last name.
If couldn’t tell, my kids are from two different baby daddies……….since K’s dad left me when I was 3 months preg, I KNEW we were never going to marry and so my dilema was what to do with HER last name. Not knowing the future with her dad, but knowing that I’d probably marry someday………..so my first childs last name is hyphenated, Smith-Jones.
So when I got married, my husband and I both, actually, hyphenated our last names. We’re the Smith-Williams. And our son is also a Smith-Williams. And so we ALL have the Smith in common………make sense?
Anyways……….it’s an idea.
Your new hair is purdy. :)
November 17th, 2007 at 11:33 am
[…] There’s a bunch to do this week and weekend. Tomorrow I’m spending the day with my supervisor at a fundraiser, then going to a Solstice Fair (squee!) at church. I’m excited about Solstice, as always. It’s my favorite holiday except for Halloween/Samhain. I’m a sun junkie. I want to do a tiny little blessing ritual for Ems because she’s old enough to have honey! & I want her first taste of the yummy sacred fluid to be in a magickal context. I don’t know what we’ll do, but something maybe… Honey’s such a big deal to me. I love Starhawk and her book, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and the melissae play a huge role in it. (By the way, this is my current favorite Melissa, who posted recently about how awesome her name is. My former favorie Melissa was a delicious crush from Pittsburgh.) Also, Emsy’s hair is exactly the color of honey. So pretty, my honeybear. […]