Have it all: take your spouse's name socially
When you get married, you are creating a family. One way to reinforce that is to have the same name. But whose name do you pick? Do you hyphenate? Do you not hyphenate, and never have a simple time filling out a form again (like my friends the Rabideau Childerses)? Do you make a new portmanteau of your "maiden" names (like my friends the Baker + Lee = Bakerlees)? Do you select a completely new name (like Will MacAskill nee Crouch)?
I submit a new alternative, one I think is by far the simplest-- just use your spouse's name socially and keep your legal name. Many women (and some men) go to the trouble of changing their names legally only to continue going by their former names in many contexts. Why? If there are two names you wish to use in different situations, one of which is already your legal name and the set of sounds that have been used to address you your entire life, and you have to chose one to be your official name and the other to use fictively in social situations, why not simply keep your maiden name as it is and use your spouse's name only in the social situations where that's desirable?
It's not as if our legal names are our one and only true names. Legal names serve an important purpose as our identifiers in a large system. But names are rich sources of social meaning in many contexts, not just legal, and we needn't restrict our use of socially meaningful names and titles to the identifier we give at the DMV. From birth, my legal name has been Martha Hollingsworth Elmore, but my first name is also Holly, because that's the name my parents called me. "Martha" and "Holly" are both my name, just in different contexts. "Martha" on official communications and school rosters, "Holly" for those who know me personally. "Holly" would be my one true name, if I had just one, and it's not my legal name.
I personally always thought I would take my husband's last name (legally) when I got married. I would be sad to see mine go, I thought, but (1) I wanted the family unity, (2) not every ancestor can be memorialized anyway, and (3) I agree with the patrilineal system for naming children. (It gives men a little pride in household and family as well as some assurance of paternity. Why not throw them a bone? There's no doubt who the mother is.) But then I got married at 21, and I just wasn't ready to change the very words by which I refer to myself. So I stayed Holly Elmore.
But I still wanted my children to share my name, and our family unit to have a short and distinct designation. Changing my legal name at this point was really not appealing after the momentum of the wedding had passed, I had publications (including this blog) under Elmore, I had networks that know me as Holly Elmore, and I simply like my name as it is. If I had legally changed my last name to Todd, I'd have had to figure out what to do about my middle name, "Hollingsworth," from which my parents derived "Holly." I wouldn't want to lose that link between my social and legal names or things could get confusing. I would have had to go through all the legal rigmarole of changing my last name to Todd, possibly having to change Martha or Hollingsworth in the process, only to use Elmore socially and professionally, like, more than half the time. And, frankly, to have to erase Elmore to be able to adopt Todd would have felt like an erasure of my identity. Why does becoming part of something bigger, a marriage, have to supersede my individual identity?
So it hit me. Why not simply use "Todd" socially in family and children situations? Todd doesn't have to replace Elmore-- they can both be in my repertoire. All I really want is a sense of family unity. I don't want a wholesale replacement of my identity in every context, and it's just not necessary. Changing your name to your husband's family name was most sensible when you were clearly joining his household legally upon marriage. You were now of that House. Why not treat your marriage like the joinging of two great houses of old, where you both gain new titles instead of erasing your base names? I decided I would be Holly, Martha, Dr. Elmore, Lady Todd, Mrs. Todd to my future children's friends... I could be all these things! Why is this not already the most popular option?
And then, at 28, I encountered possibly the best reason not to change your legal name: divorce. Changing my name would have meant a complicated process of unchanging along with the difficult process of separating. I already had a sense of not being allowed to leave my marriage, and that would have been multiplied if I had had his name, too. Having my own name through the years had contributed to maintaining my independence. When we ended the marriage, it was emotionally difficult, but I did not struggle with being my own person separate from my ex-husband, and I believe that keeping my legal name mine was part of that.
Changing your legal name to reflect a social change, marriage, frustrates the whole purpose of legally documented names-- to identify the same individual over space and time. Filing name change paperwork and updating every legal form of identification is a hassle for us, and it still doesn't do that good of a job linking up documents with different names. Chalk this up to my time building a database, but I don't think the identifier should change every time an alias is added.
I believe I will also give my kids the name "Elmore" socially, without creating legal headaches. "First name" "Middle name" [Elmore] [Dad’s name]. Possessing my name legally isn't really what matters to me-- what I want is the sense of bequeathing them my legacy as an individual and not just a member of team Dad’s lineage. I'll do that regardless, but the name I've answered to most of my life is a particularly potent symbol. I'm not having kids yet, so who knows how I'll feel then, but for now the idea of giving my children my name extralegally meets my needs. Let their legal name and the name they pass down to their children be patrilineal, but, hell, if my grandchildren want to use Elmore socially, I say why not? As long as they consistently put down their legal name on forms and don't try to mislead people about their identity, why shouldn't my descendants use as many of their ancestors’ names as they like?
If we allow legal names to serve their functions-- clearly identifying the same individual over time-- and social names to serve their functions-- honoring ancestors, reflecting relationships and group membership, reflecting our preferences-- then the messy issue of changing and assigning names in the making of a family suddenly gets a lot easier. If we don't limit ourselves to one name to serve every function, I think we can have it all.