I didn’t change my name. Did I get an unusual amount of flak over it? I dunno; what’s the normal amount? I did hear quite a lot about it, though. Surprisingly enough, most of the shit I caught about it came from my own family, mainly my mom and one of my cousins. Mom kept pointing out that it would be awfully hard on any kids we had to have a different name than me (at that point we’d told her approximately 7 billion times we weren’t having kids), that it would awfully confusing to people who wouldn’t realize we were a couple or wouldn’t realize we were married (anyone who knows us well enough to know our last names is gonna know we’re married, and to whom, trust me), that it wasn’t like I had a career that would be affected by changing my name (gee, thanks, that’s just what I need to hear when I’m having trouble finding a job down here), that blah de blah de blah harp harp harp nag nag nag. My cousin…well, there’s a couple other threads about all that. We’ll just say she didn’t approve of the decision.
Personally, I found my mil’s approach rather refreshing, if slightly passive-aggressive. She asked periodically if I was changing my name, said “Oh, that’s nice”, and then professed utter surprise at the wedding when the minister announced us with different last names. This was the first she’d heard of such a plan, and she didn’t know if she liked it. She said that once, quietly, to Dr.J, where I couldn’t hear it. And that was the absolute end of it, at least that I’ve ever heard about. It was a really nice change of pace.
Why did I keep my birth name? Well, I didn’t really see any advantage to changing it, to be honest. I know it makes some people feel more like a family, but having the same name just doesn’t make me feel that way. My family is so full of steps and halfs and married-ins that pretty much none of us have the same last name, and so sharing a name just never really meant anything to me. Dr.J seemed to kind of like the idea of us having the same name, but he didn’t like it enough to ever consider changing his name by a single letter. Overall, it just seemed like a big hassle for a miniscule benefit.
Besides, I like my name. I like the flow of the syllables when you say it out loud. I like the way it looks written out. I like what the individual names mean, and I was loathe to give any of them up. Those names were the first things my parents gave me, and they’re the only things I got the day I was born that I still have.
I did seriously consider hyphenating, though. But then I realized it was going to be just as much work as outright taking his name, and since he wasn’t going to hyphenate, we still wouldn’t have the same last name. So I said screw it and left things the way they were.