Courtesy of Sara Rowe Mount
- I changed my name when I got married because it felt like it was expected of me.
- I regretted it later, but I don’t want to go through the hassle of changing it back.
- Now I use my maiden name as part of my professional name to reclaim that part of my identity.
Prior to getting married in 2015, changing my last name felt like an inevitable part of the process. Both my husband and I were from conservative, traditional families, and I didn’t know anyone who had kept their maiden names after tying the knot.
While the practice felt both outdated and sexist, I also felt as though not changing my name could be a potential source of conflict with extended family.
I thought changing my last name would make things easier, but it didn’t
We also eventually wanted children, and I was thinking ahead about our future family when I made the decision. There was something appealing about our entire family sharing the same last name, and I wanted my child to have the same last name as I did. I also thought that it would make things logistically easier when it came to dealing with schools and doctors’ offices down the road.
The year after our marriage, I started the process of legally changing my name, and discovered the process was actually fairly difficult. I had to change every personal identifying document, starting with my Social Security card, and then update everyone from my bank to my doctor’s offices of the name change. I had put the process off for months because it was intensive, and honestly, I was already having second thoughts about doing it at all.
So, at the same time I changed my last name, I also legally changed my middle name to my maiden name. It was my way of retaining that part of my identity.
While I regret changing my name, I likely won’t change it back
Soon after I legally changed my name, I began to wonder if it had been a mistake. And the more time passed, the more I regretted it. In the first few years after we got married, I saw both a friend and a family member choose not to change their last names for personal and professional reasons.
I was a bit jealous of the confidence they had to keep their maiden names even when others criticized their decision. Then, our relationship with my in-laws began to deteriorate. The fact that I now had their last name felt both like an unwanted connection to them and a symbol of the patriarchal, conservative values that were causing the problems in the first place.
But at that point, we had already had our daughter, who had our shared last name. Changing my name back would not only require a ridiculous amount of time and paperwork, but also would mean that I wouldn’t have the same last name as her anymore. While sometimes it can be a bitter reminder, it also represents the family that the three of us have created together.
Using my maiden name professionally is my compromise
When I returned to writing professionally, there was another issue. I had formerly published under my maiden name and have a very common first name. It felt like there would be no connection between what I had written before marriage and my newer pieces if I just used my new last name. So I decided to start using my full legal name professionally, including my maiden-name-turned-middle-name, to reduce confusion.
But honestly, it was about more than practicality. Using my full name professionally is a way to hold onto that piece of my identity in a very public way. When I see an article or book with my full name on it, it feels like it represents me as a whole person, both who I was before I got married and who I am now as part of our little family. And an added bonus is that now I don’t share a name with hundreds of other people!