Name Change for Gay Couples
27 Oct
I’ve been thinking lately about names. At least part of this started with that terrifying story of the woman who was hospitalized in south Florida while getting onto a cruise and whose partner and children were denied access to her bedside by the hospital staff. I want to know the best way to deal with a situation like that in case, god forbid, it ever happens to us. Would having the same name be some sort of get-in-free card smoothing confused staff members into believing that we really are related before they get a chance to discriminate? What if it was a child who was in the hospital—would the same name (and both names on the birth certificate) make some small but crucial difference?
But part of this is being inspired by other (less scary) things. The least of these was in choosing a return-address stamp and being annoyed that there is no way to get a monogram with more than one last initial. Then there’s the house I walk by on my way to work with a sign saying “The Nelson’s” which I note every time for both its incorrect punctuation and the sort of cozy implications of family that come from having a shared name. And I think about our imaginary future children and wonder if I’ll be sad that we don’t all have the same name—and the immediate recognition from strangers that we are family. I realize that people will know that we’re a family anyway and that my kids will be my kids whether we’re called the same thing or not (my two stepsiblings each have different last names, and both are different from their mother’s, and they are obviously related to one another), but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.
As I was ruminating on all of this last night I mentioned it to Lynn and her whole face lit up when I said I was thinking about taking her name. We’d never discussed it before so I didn’t know she’d feel that way. And now I feel torn—I don’t hate my name, and it’s done well so far, but I always (always.) have to spell it and hers is a little more common. It also avoids all of those terrible pitfalls that some people come up against (one of my high school crushes was doomed from the minute I realized my married name would be Em Clem) But I wonder if I’ll feel like I’ve given up an important part of myself if I change my name, or if it is playing into some strange gender stereotype since I’m generally the more ‘girlie’ one, and the one who’s likely to be the gestational parent. It also feeds on the few lingering fears I have (thanks, grandma!) about this being perceived as a ‘pretend’ wedding—with all of the hollow improvisations of the real thing. Maybe I should have just changed it in Boston and seen whether that actually had an effect on things once I got home…
So readers and fellow bloggers, what are your plans? Are you keeping your names? Coming up with new names? Hyphenating? What do your families think of the whole thing? What are your reasons?
I will be taking J’s last name. I also am fond of my last name, but not overly so. I am mainly changing my name because I want us to be a family unit to the world. J will be having our children so they will have her last name and I want us all to have the same name. We could hyphenate, but I have this image of the future where everyone has 16 last names or we could make a new one, but J really likes hers. I am still a little sad, I mean it has been my name for 25 years, but it is worth it to me.
Natalie and I talked about changing our names. Natalie REALLY wanted to hyphenate. I thought Fitzpatrick-Prizel as a last name might be a kill joy.
I insisted on taking her last name for a few reasons(despite a LOT of pushback from Natalie)
1. The number one reason? I wanted a more unique and googable name. I know. How lame. But as an artist, having a name people could easily google and find me was a huuuuge plus. There must be 3454576567678 Kelly Fitzpatrick’s in the world.
2. I have no love for my last name. After my father passed away, my father’s side of the family never talked to me again because I’m gay. I don’t even know if my grammy on that side is still living. So carrying around that last name was a burden and painful reminder of the whole incident.
3. I really liked the idea of my kids having the same last name as the both of us. I do worry about the fact if we just hoped over one state, our marriage would mean nada…and our rights would be questionable. Having a last name might be beneficial in an emergency.
I considered hyphenating. That is actually a lot for me as I have two first names already, why make it worse. Then my Valerie said she would’nt do it. That in turn made me feel a little “less than”, so I guess the names will stay the same.
Full disclosure: I am a woman marrying a man soon, but I love the blog and am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but as I am also struggling with this issue, I wanted to share my thoughts
I have a very unique name that I adore (Milojevich, pronounced totally phonetically if you pretend the “j” is a “y”) and has wonderful meaning to me, especially after my father passed away in high school. I have always had a strong connection to my serbian heritage, so the idea of becoming a Bennett is just not going to happen. We are thinking about blending the names so that we still have the same last name, but still making it ethnic sound. Right now we are thinking Bennett + Milojevich = Bennojevich.
Or he might take my name. I like that idea a lot.
We are going to keep our own last names. It hasn’t even really been much of a discussion for us. But I think the main reason it isn’t (at least in my head) is because we’re not planning on having children. I think if we were, I would want us to have the same last name because of the whole family unit thing.
We are having this exact same discussion for our upcoming wedding. Both my partner and I are very attached to our last names, and would like to hyphenate but both of our last names are very long…so together it’s a bit unbearable! One thing we’re considering is to make one of our last names a second middle name for both of us and the other our “real” last name. That way we’d both get to keep our names but on a daily basis share the same one.
We never really had any debate on the subject- we’ll be hyphenating (hopefully without the hyphen though). We like the idea of having the same name both for us as a couple and for future (far into the future, lol) children.
Thanks for all of the input!
I think we’re leaning now towards me just taking Lynn’s name. She offered to hyphenate (and a few of my straight friends said they liked that idea) and I went through a short phase of feeling like we should both take mine as our legal middle names, but in the end I think it’ll work out better for us if I just change mine. I’ll probably keep using my name some at work, though.
(kelly, I did google all of the permutations once I read your comment just to make sure I wouldn’t be sharing my new identity with anyone awful–as far as I can tell it’s all clear!)
My partner and I haven’t decided yet. She has her father’s last name but always wished she didn’t (absentee dad, no contact in many years). I found that I wasn’t okay with taking her name for that reason, but also because it turns out that I’m pretty attached to my own. I think she would probably be okay with taking mine, but I want to take something of her into my name. I hate hyphenation, so the latest draft is that we’ll both be Firstname Myname Hername.
I’m struggling with this too. We are still deciding with the top contenders being me taking her last name or us both changing to my mother’s maiden name. I don’t think either of our families will care deeply one way or the other. I’m really leaning toward taking her last name. I’m also worried about gender roles, stereotypes, and what taking her name implies given that I’m also more likely to be the gestational parent. At the same time, I do see changing my name to her’s as a sort of queering of the whole naming system. I do really like that if we go that route, we will be Mesdames wasabi and ginger herlastname (two men would be Messrs). While hetero couples have to deal with one person’s name being dropped completely like Mrs. John Smith, queer couples don’t have that particular problem.