Gah. Clowns.

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.)

name, name, whats in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, no?

My head is rolling from all this name talk. At first i was like...skimmy skimmy skimmy...doesn't apply much to me....

o wait. ya... I kinda changed my name.

For the most part I go by my initials (first, middle) mostly cuz I hate first name, tho, funny due to start of this conversation, less so of late. I changed over to initials in college. 1st day of classes, all 3 classes had 3 different Brian's in them. That put at least 10 in a class of 400. So it seemed a good idea to re-invent myself as BC to avoid confusion (and avoid a name I didn't care for).