Fast forward a few months to a phase in the wedding planning process when I have time to think. Hmm, names. I'd been noticing that several recently-wed friends of mine had kept their maiden names on Facebook. Was there a movement afoot? Are women starting to buck this tradition, and if so, what were the reasons? As a matter of fact, why do we change our names at all--what's the meaning behind it? I set out to find the answer, and in the meantime made a mental list of all my names and all the possibilities. And I thought about why I had already chosen to change my name in adulthood:
Brittany Lauren Shultz? My legal name. Of course I'll always feel somewhat sentimental towards Brittany, but it just does not fit me anymore.
Disclaimer: this is going to get tangential.
It's one of those names that was hit by a grisly train wreck of late '80s to mid '90s popularity and then dragged through the mud by a specifically unsavory celebrity icon. Let's paint a brutally honest picture of every Brittany you've met in your life, shall we? Snobby. Shallow. Stupid. Slutty. Essentially she looks like a stand-in for a main character on Mean Girls, right? Suuuure there are always exceptions, but the year I was born this was the 7th most popular female name, and 22,223 baby girls became Brittanys in that year alone. Though I don't have the data to support it, I'd venture to say many of them were white, upper-middle-class recipients of this name -- (and admittedly I was one too!) which would explain our collective image of "Brittany." According to data from the Social Security Administration, the median age of Brittanys in 2014 is 23 years old. Thousands upon thousands of aforementioned Brittanys, just a few years younger than me in biological age, but (by my calculations) at least a decade younger in psychological age.
Source: Social Security Administration data
Have you ever met a Brittany (Brittanie/Britney/Brittni or any other obscene aberration thereof) that gave you the impression she was a respected, professional young woman of high moral character, vast intelligence, and unwavering humility? Exactly. You haven't, because all of us Brittanys that wanted to be taken seriously started going by our middle names as soon as we could convince people to do so. With a cursory Google search, I happened upon this baby name forum and this message board today, both of which support my thesis.
If you're thinking "Oh, that's silly! I never judge people based on their names!"... "not every Brittany I know is a snobby bitch!"... "The negative association couldn't possibly be so strong!" then I would urge you to read The Namesake, which, through a fictional character, insightfully describes the defining power of names on our identity. With names like this, unfortunately, the trendy association can often overcome the original meaning altogether.
As I started applying for jobs and internships in college (~'06-'07), I decided I didn't want to continue using a name with such a stigma attached to it, so I chose to be defined in my adult life by my second name. For 7 years now I've been using my middle name both professionally and personally, and the only people that still use my first name are family members and maybe four or five good friends that have known me a long time and can't fathom switching over. This doesn't bother me. Though I've had a few people cast off my name change as an identity crisis of sorts. Nope. I don't think so. The way I viewed myself was no longer in line with the broader cultural identity my name had taken on. Quite simply, I grew out of it.
In recent years I've discovered that more and more people my age go by different names than they used when younger. One friend of mine noticed that she gets more interviews by using her gender-neutral first name instead of the middle name she'd used for years. Case in point. Names matter. Identities matter. And I'm not so abnormal. When a name is so tightly associated with an age, an era, a stereotype, a personality, a relationship-- it only makes sense to let it go when the time comes. While some people are bothered by such a drastic change, I tend to embrace it as a new opportunity.
Now, let's get back to business.
Lauren Shultz? Of course I like this. And I have to say I like the way it looks on my business cards.
But let's take a minute to talk about Shultz. I have no issues with Shultz. Hell, I've been a Shultz my whole life! Do I feel a strong inclination to remain a Shultz until my dying days? Not necessarily. Does the name feel like the cornerstone of my identity? Not particularly. If anything, Shultz can - at times - be annoying. I have spelled Shultz more times than I can even fathom, and even when I do spell it aloud, people will still write down Schultz, Schulz, and Schultze. That's just the way it is. Do I consider that a negative association? No way. I'm just used to the misspellings. In fact, some of my closest friends STILL do not know how to spell my last name. In my friend's wedding announcement I was "Schulz." Even more, just last week I received this piece of mail that includes THREE different spellings of my last name in ONE document:
.jpg)
If you can't read it, that's "Shulte," "Schultz," and "Shultz,"-- all three spellings used in one letter of correspondence. I think that just about sums it up, don't you?
Brittany Lauren Keenan? Maybe? Am I required to keep my first name? Is that a legal thing?
Lauren Keenan? That sounds strong. Like I could be a sassy, no-nonsense attorney at law representing Keenan & Keenan, LLP.
Brittany Lauren Shultz Keenan? Too long; also, not a great cadence to it.
Lauren Shultz Keenan? Women often replace their middle name with the maiden name, right? That's a thing people do?
Lauren Shultz-Keenan? No; and does anyone even hyphenate anymore? Who has room for that kind of thing in the signature line?
Brittany Lauren Shultz-Keenan-stein-owitz? POSSIBLY.
My question is: WHY do we change our names? Because it's tradition? I have already "changed my name" by choosing to use my middle name in my adult life. I am not averse to changing my name by any means--if anything, changing your first name seems more drastic to me than a last name. But I don't want to change my last name just because it's a thing women do when they get married. That's not a good enough reason for me. WHY am I changing it? I had my reasons when I stopped using "Brittany" - and I don't look back. There is a social pressure for women to change their names, which has lessened in recent years, but still exists. This is evident to me because I didn't question whether I would change it or not when I first became engaged. It seems to me that acknowledging my "choice" in the matter appears a bit taboo as well.
I've gone through lots of feminist articles on the subject recently - including a Harvard journal, the Huffington Post, and the Guardian - to consider what it means to change my name in a postmodern society. Am I a feminist? In the sense that I am an educated female, absolutely. I don't want to balk at decades of progress in gender equality by simply agreeing to a mainstream custom. Times have changed. Women are getting married later in life, they are more educated, and have career aspirations equal to or exceeding those of their spouse. These days couples have more egalitarian marriages than previous generations.
Considering all these advancements in gender equality, I would like to respect the progress that has been made and still adjust my identity to that of a modern wife in an egalitarian marriage. That being said, I do not believe my marriage should be one in which I subsume my husband's identity-- the feminist argument being that taking his name is an act of disassociating me from myself. In my opinion, while my identity remains my own, it will undergo changes (as will his!) as we learn to exist as a couple entering into a lifelong, committed union. That cannot happen without changes to the way we both operate. We will make decisions collectively, compromise, share responsibilities, and make efforts to maintain our relationship. From my conversations with other wives and mothers, those titles do not define them, their identity remains their own while growing to encompass more responsibilities-- as do their husbands'.
All things being equal, why don't men change their names? Why not hyphenate both partners' last names? Going further, why don't children take their mother's last name? These are all valid questions and will continue to arise as marriage becomes more of an equal institution. In a recent informal Facebook poll of my friends, I received the following feedback to the "WHY" question: one friend didn't question the custom, one friend hated her last name and changed it as a result, one friend kept her last name to buck the patriarchal tradition, one friend changed her last name after 2 years of marriage, one friend hyphenated her name and so did her partner, one friend kept her last name and the husband changed his name, one friend changed her last name for the symbolic unity of their family. These are all women I respect, and their responses are completely valid because they are their own choices.
As for me, I can only do what I feel is the best solution for me. And I can make an informed decision, all the while respecting the fact that I have the right to make that decision. I've got a history of changing names. I'm not opposed to it by any means. I welcome the idea of building something with Jon and creating something new, meanwhile acknowledging the antiquated nature of this tradition in a modern society.
In our early conversations on the topic -- around the time I was dreamily constructing his name with letterpress typeface -- Jon did express that it was important to him for me to change my name. Neither of us had taken the time to ask WHY it mattered to us. Now that we've thoroughly talked through the WHY of name changing, he tends to agree that my last name doesn't have any bearing on our commitment to each other and it doesn't lessen the significance of our marital bond. Though we both want to be part of the same team. We acknowledge our biases and existing patriarchal tendencies -- and it's important to me that we can have these types of intelligent conversations. I know that I could change my name altogether, or I could follow tradition and take his -- it wouldn't change my identity as an independent, strong, educated woman.
Ladies, what do you think? If you have changed your name or kept your name - what factors influenced your decision? Tradition? Symbolism? Bureaucracy? Equality?
No comments:
Post a Comment