In happy news, I've decided to treat myself to a deep tissue Thai massage today. I expect to be in happy pain shortly.

I can't imagine ever changing my name, it seems like a such a huge hassle for such an antiquated reason. But then I also don't imagine ever having children and thus having to think about the group/family unit all having the same last name.

I know my changing my name initially was because my Dad adopted my step-brother and step-sister (with the same first name as me) and so she and I shared the same name from junior high and I was just over it. Oddly, I am the only one who has a trace of maiden name left in my name. I liked that name. I just wanted some flexibility.

Tolliver.

And for additional WTF? Names fun: [link]

Don't know if I'd change my name, but I do tend to try it out in my head with the name of whoever I'm dating. I'd want to keep my middle name that I have, though.

Personally, I have really resented the patriarchal assumption that women should change their name when they marry. This is something that has bothered me nearly my whole life.

I remember an argument I got into in high school with a teacher and another girl after I said I'd never change my last name. I was told loftily I'd feel differently after I fell in love, I'd WANT to change my name to his! I said, so then, if he loves me, why doesn't he change his name to mine? Oh, hilarity.

When I see the long Indian names in the credits of movies, I wonder if they have to be truncated to fill out the various computerized forms people have to fill out or if the forms are scalable.

A bunch of "my" authors have long Indian names, and they truncate them or just use initials. It screws up our systems when they use initials for their LAST name though.

I have a regular author whose last name is O, which apparently blows the minds of our typesetters. I usually get it back as O. Firstname. Because a name cannot be one letter.

I had the discussion with Will, would he be willing to change his name to my last name. He said no. Mostly because of his line of work being in sales. I forgot to argue that if I were in sales no one would think it would be weird if I changed my mind.

He doesn't expect me to change my name and has no strong feelings either way.

So I threw out - what if we created a new last name. After much discussion he'd be willing if we went with Who.

I tried to counter with Pond but he said he'd only be willing if we went with Who.

I have never intended to change my name, even when I dated dudes. Just wasn't something I thought twice about. We were going to hyphenate our kids' last name but I thought it was just too cumbersome, so told DW I wanted them to have her last name and mine would be their middle name. Not sure I'd have felt the same if I were married to a dude (on baby last names, that is).

Huh. The only Taliaferro I've ever known pronounced it just like bonny's.

I changed my name, mostly because I knew it would make David and his dad happy (it did, very much so) and I hoped it would make Emmett happy (what was I thinking? He couldn't possibly care less), and partly because David's ex had not and I was very firm on doing things differently than she had. Also, I was very tired of being at the end of the alphabet and liked the notion of trading up, at least a little bit.

I don't think any of those are especially good reasons, except the making David happy part, but the conclusion I've come to in the end is that I was really not much attached to my old surname and I'm not much attached to this one either - I would fight tooth and nail to keep Jacqueline, but it just doesn't matter that much to me what comes after that. I have my mom's brain and my grandmother's face and feet, and Matilda has my grandfather's sly grin and my cheek dimple; David and I have been married probably three times as long as he and his ex, and each of us is the person the other has been with longest in all our lives, and Emmett sometimes slips up and calls me Mom. And all those things matter much more to me than a surname.

Though if I could convince David that we should both change our names to Zmayhem, I'd be all the hell over that.

But not only will my last name change, but my Ms. changes to Mrs.

Wait, isn't the point of "Ms." that it doesn't denote marriage status (as opposed to Miss v. Mrs.)

part of my identity is spelling a difficult last name

Ahahahaha, yes.

I did not change my name or really even think about it as an option. I feel very much the same way le nubian does about it. We did discuss not-terribly-seriously about changing both our names to something new, but Tom was in the middle of getting his green card and knew that the feds would not be pleased about that kind of change.