Weddingbee Blog

There was no putting off the day that advanced—the bridal day; and all preparations for its arrival were complete. I at least, had nothing more to do: there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded, ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber: to-morrow, at this time, they would be far on their road to London: and so should I (God willing),—or rather, not I, but one Jane Rochester, a person whom as yet I knew not… Mrs. Rochester! She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time after eight o’clock a.m.; and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world alive before I assigned to her all that property.

-Chapter XXV, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Put another way:

They call me quiet girl
But I’m a riot yeah
Maybe Joleisa
Always the same.
That’s not my name.
That’s not my name.
That’s not my name.
That’s not my name.

-The Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name”

True, Jane (spoiler alert!) would eventually become Mrs. Rochester. And true, The Ting Tings were likely not singing about the confusion and societal expectations surrounding the patriarchal tradition of name changes. But both passages stir me (okay one stirs, the other I bop my head to).

I love my name.

God, I love my name. In my notebooks, as a child, I did not practice signatures like “Mrs. Kirk Cameron” or “Potato Cameron” (ha!). I did not match my first name with my current crush’s last to see how they’d look together. Doing so, even in my head or spoken teasingly by friends, gave me no strange thrill, no rush of emotion, no flutter of the heart. Instead, my name matched with another always fell dead with a thud to the floor.

Instead, I practiced my name, my signature, over and over. I still do. (Narcissistic much?)

So it was no great surprise to anyone when I said I would be keeping my name. There was no confusion on my part, no internal debate or struggle. It simply is. My name paired with Potato Head’s last is a stranger, someone I have never met, someone, as Jane said, not yet born.

Luckily, this choice is becoming more and more common, right? I haven’t met any nay-sayers. No “but what about your future children?” or “But wouldn’t a shared last name make you feel more unified?” I have heard some “What does Potato Head think about this?” and I smile because of course, he doesn’t mind. I don’t think I could marry a man who would stake a claim over my own name, who would insist or be upset or insulted. Just like I’m not insulted that he wants to keep his name.

Destined to be un-monogrammable?

Source

I’m happy and lucky to have this choice. No, we’ll never have a mailbox that says “The Joneses”. We won’t have a “team name”. We’re okay with this. (Incidentally, my mom has told me that women in “the old country”—Azores, Portugal—kept their names when they married. So really, I am being very traditional!)

Or! Maybe we can still have a team name: The Awesomes.

And a mailbox to match.

What choice did you make? What choice did your significant other make? Keep? Change? Combine? Hyphen? Something else?