Hil, I hope for the best for your mother.
I have little interest in the idea of changing my last name, unless he has a cool one (which reminds me of a HS friend surnamed Gumpel--I totally tried to wangle an intro to her brother, because I'd totally love to marry into that name, clunky as it would be with ita). I'm surprised by the talk of people dropping middle names. I don't think I've knowingly encountered that due to marriage.
My father changed his name when he left for university. He dropped his middle name (understandably so) and added his mother's surname as his middle name. And he then uses that as his first name, so he's all H. MothersSurname FathersSurname. Works on him.
Had a cousin who did the same sort of thing, shoving the awkward first name into an initial and going by the middle name.
The women? Some hyphenate, some concatenate (my mother is professionally MaidenName MarriedName, but socially just MarriedName), some leave it be.
And the kids just pick and choose. A number of them have chosen to go with their mother's name alone.
eta: Dammit, that article makes me want to change my name. What a git.
I know a lot of people who didn't change their name when they got married, but after they had kids, gave up and did it.
The first time Lee or juliana used your real name I realized my error and felt like a total dork
Oh, don't!! I totally answer to meara, in real life, as well as to my "real" name. (And to Indy, my drag name!) After all, meara is a name *I* picked!
I always think of you as Meara--and I think I have called you that face-to-face.
Somehow your names are totally interchangeable for me.
I very resolutely think of myself sans-surname most of the time. So this recent explosion of Facebook and LinkedIn feels terribly weird.
I guess another reason I wouldn't change my last name is that I'd probably not use that one much either.
I'm losing my touch. I just now checked to see how far my aunt is from Florida baseball. The answer - too far. Darn it.
Pumpkin fudge.
On the names discussion. I got married at 19, so went with the flow, but I'd probably have done the same thing - exchanging a difficult to pronounce maiden name that was 14 letters and 2 hyphens long for a simple to say married name that was a mere 5 letters. I actually had "friends" who encouraged me to hyphenate the two. Bah!
meara is one of those who is always meara, real name notwithstanding. shrift, too.
My name was a big big deal when I got married, because I eloped. We'd actually talked about both of us taking my grandmother's name, which I think we would have actually done had we had a traditional wedding (and thus, time to talk it over with her and with his family) because my mom was an only child, so the name is now rare.
But then I loved my middle name, which is my other grandmother's first name, and didn't want to lose it. So I was going to go FirstName MiddleName MarriedName. But to my parents it felt like wholesale rejection, like I didn't want anything to do with them. I'd hurt them needlessly enough with the whole eloping thing, so I went ahead and kept them all.
So my legal name is FirstName MiddleName MaidenName MarriedName, almost like the Latin way. But then I still use FirstInitial MiddleInitial LastInitial on legal documents, so it's mostly only symbolic.
Still, since I ended up with an English first and last name, I'm glad to have the Japanese two middle names.
Congratulations, meara!
As for married names, DH and I both hyphenated. It was impt to him that we both change our names since marriage would inevitably change both of us. Oddly however SS dropped the hyphen when they made the change official.
I am now finding that hyphenating is considered outre or weird most of the time. Lots of people comment on my name, and most of the comments are negative. (And just to add to the weird, DH says that he gets lots of compliments on the name, LOTS.)
