Did you change your last name when you married? If you aren’t married, do you plan to keep your maiden name if you ever tie the knot?
Was this hard for you to do? Can’t wait to get rid of your maiden name for something better?
I have to admit that I struggled a bit with this. I found it hard to change my last name. There was never any question that I would, but I was surprised how much it bothered me to do so.
The best part was moving way up the alphabetical list. After languishing in the Ss for almost thirty years, I vaulted up to the Bs. Very nice.
Please leave your story if you care to!
I married young (at 22), and was excited about taking on my husband’s name. But… I really didn’t want to give up my family name, so I switched my maiden name to my middle name. I’m really glad to have it in there somewhere. And I realized after the fact that my new last name is harder for people to spell than my former last name. Grrr. It’s also a little bit hard because I don’t have a ton of admiration for my husband’s father’s family who gave him his last name. It’s a kind of a family joke to say, “That’s just an X trait,” but fortunately, I have enough space and distance from that side of the family that I don’t think of it much. It’s not like its an awful heritage or anything, but its just easier for me to identify with my original family name, for probably arbitrary reasons. I try to remember that we are our own nuclear X family, and what the outside family does doesn’t have to define us (or me). You gotta take the bad with the good…
I changed my name, too, and it was surprisingly hard. The first time I was at a doctor’s office and they called my new name out was a little shocking. I’ve been married about 4 years now and I still have to think about signing the new name. It’s not bad, or oppressive, it’s just…weird. It’s odd.