Till Death Do Us Part: The Joy of Name Changing

Draft 1

I got married so I’m in the process of changing my last name. Did I mention that I got married three years ago? Yes, three years ago, in a church garden in the oppression of July Savannah heat. A few days before that, when my fiancé and I went to apply for our marriage license, the lady looked up from her small reading glasses and asked, “Last name, please?”

I had been fairly certain (I use the term “fairly” in its truest sense) that I would take my husband’s last name when I got married and became his wife. I should actually say that I made that assumption, and then pushed it out of my mind, afraid to entertain it too much because I might back down. I was an independent woman, and considered myself a feminist, but I thought it was kind of exciting to become known by my adored husband’s last name, so I thought that when the issue finally came up officially, I would feel caught up in the moment and say “yes, that name is spelled “b-e-l-l”. But when the woman with the small reading glasses stared up at me, and she looked so official, I panicked. My response came out like an adolescent, anxious grunt: “No,” I looked from her to my husband, “I can’t do it. I’m keeping my own last name.”

My husband and I had discussed this, and the topic of keeping my name had come up, and he had always been supportive, encouraging me to do what felt right for me. I had thought that that loving support was enough to make me want to take his name, but when the time came, it wasn’t.

The woman looked between me and my husband and appeared to be nonverbally communicating that this was an issue that didn’t concern her, this dilemma, and that she simply needed to record a name and get us out of her office. So out I walked still Donna “B_ _ _”, and terribly relieved.

I toyed with the notion of hyphenating for a while, but knew I would tire quickly of making people utter my last name at such great length: “B _ _ _ - Bell”. Especially since I was a teacher. How in the world could I force my students to say that every time they needed my help or attention? And the idea that friendly consolers suggested – of taking on my maiden name as my middle name, and dropping the middle name I had since birth. The thought of doing that on the day of the name change didn’t help much either, and the notion that I would never again get to be “Donna Lynn B_ _ _ -,” the name on my cute little cross-stitched plaque that hung in my bedroom most of my childhood, reduced me to tears. Where would that little girl go? I simply couldn’t find any place to feel comfortable about this name change.

As we walked out the door, I squeaked out through a stuffy nose, “when we have a child. I’ll make the change if we have a family.”

So flash forward three years. I am now the new mother of a six-month-old whom I am in love with: baby Anna, last name “Be _ _ _”. And so the day has come. Or “came”, I should say. I am actually behind according to that utterance about changing the name when a family began. Like so many other times, I kept finding reasons and excuses not to begin the name changing process. For one thing, it would be a heck of a lot of work; everybody knows me as “B_ _ _”; I don’t have time to see about it, etc. But the reality of it was that I didn’t want to do it – still – because it was painful. In fact, I couldn’t believe how emotionally trying the whole notion was for me. So many women had made this change, and never thought twice about it. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Why was I not as undaunted? Why did this have to carry so much emotional weight for me? Why did the mere thought of it almost always send me into tears?

I had been spelling and pronouncing my last name for people all of my life: “B_ _ _” – that’s b as in ‘boy’-_ - e”. I felt embarrassed of it most of my life for one reason or another: it wasn’t very aesthetic sounding; because my father was the superintendent of schools and saying that was my last name immediately stigmatized me and connected me to him. But the fact is, it was my name, and love it or not, it belonged to and identified me. I had won awards in that name, applied for and gotten accepted into college and graduate school in that name; bought my first house in that name. I was proud of that name, and of what I had accomplished while wearing it. I eventually became so proud of and attached to that name that I became impervious to any jokes people could make in its pronounciation, and I had become so strong in my own identity that at that point in my life, it was my name more than it was my father’s name. I had come into my own, and I was proud of the person I had become. I had been years into the evolution of such self-assuredness, and I like it.
Piece still in progress. To be continued.