When Dr. Hyde and I got married, I faced a common question for progressive, matrimonially-inclined women: to change, or not to change? As astute readers have no doubt figured out, I chose to change my legal name, but keep my "maiden" (heh) name professionally. Thus at work I continue as Girlname X. Jekyll, while at home I am technically Girlname J. Hyde.
This choice came as surprise to many who know me. Because we travel in rarefied academic circles, vanishingly few women of our acquaintance even considered changing their names upon matrimony. That's an reactionary neanderthal symbol of marriage as ownership. Countless women fought very hard to show how this particular patriarchal holdover diminished the standing of married women by treating them as chattel.
However, thanks to the women who have already fought this fight, I no longer feel as though the only "feminist" option on the table is to keep my maiden name. To me, the fight about married names was more of a demonstration experiment, if you will. The point was to raise awareness of the insidious ways in which we devalue women. It wasn't really about your last name, per se.
Because anyway, my "maiden" name? That's my father's last name. So how am I undermining the patriarchy by keeping it? I know a lot of women, including many old-guard feminists, will disagree that the name is unimportant. But for my generation, I think that's shifting a little. Another grad student in my lab decided to do the same thing I did, for the same reasons. It's got some symbolism, but not so much that we felt owned by it. I'm unspeakably grateful to the women who fought this fight for giving me this option.
Why'd I choose the professional/personal route, rather than staying with Jekyll or changing wholesale to Hyde? Well, I felt I had to keep Jekyll at work. Not only have I already published with it, it is about 275 times more unique than Hyde, and PubMed is terrible with common names.
So why take Hyde at home? Dr. Hyde and I are planning on having children, one way or another, and Dr. Hyde prefers strongly that these (currently imaginary) children have his last name. I could have put up a fight about this, since why shouldn't they be little Jekylls, especially if they ever plan on growing up into pubmeddable scientists themselves?
But the thing is--feminism has accomplished a huge amount, and one of those things is that Dr. Hyde's respect for women, their choices, and their accomplishments, is absolute. I have never heard him say a single thing that disparaged or diminished women, or in any way indicated that he was likely to take them less seriously than men. I love him for this (as well as for many other reasons). So I decided not to fight the last-name thing for the prospective kids, because after all, it's window-dressing; I know without doubt that Dr. Hyde would treat his daughters as well as he treated his sons, so who cares what they're called?
And, in my own hidebound reactionary way, I wanted to have the same last name as the kids.
So that, in non-nutshell format, is why I chose what I did.
___________
From a practical standpoint, for curious readers, it has been a minor to moderate hassle. It would have been significantly easier to keep my maiden name wholesale, but doing the personal/professional split is not noticeably more difficult than taking Hyde wholesale would have been, either. And, there's a certain inner glee I derive from having a secret identity, in a superhero sort of way. Sure, you know me as Dr. Jekyll.....but wait til I pull out my driver's license! I'm a whole new person! It's possible that it requires a certain abnormal turn of mind to think this way.
15 years ago
13 comments:
how does this work for employment? Will you ever get in the position in which your legal but not publishing name is the name under which you have your job, apply for grants*, etc?
I guess I'm more familiar with retaining the pre-marriage name for legal purposes but informally going by Mrs. HusbandsName at home...
* I have run across one situation in which something like this came up, engendering a WTF? moment. not something you want popping up in grant review, I will say...
Oh, that's a little worrisome. But there's a terrific young FSP in my field who did the same name-change thing as me, and she's doing fine with funding, so I'm assuming there's some way to deal with this. Do you remember from the grant review section if the confusion could have been averted by better action on the candidate's part to let you know of the name disparity?
At my place of employment, it was no trouble. They have me under my married name, but I am aliased in the internet "phone book" as Jekyll.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone has heard of successes/problems with this route!
I guess my point is that on the formal part of the applictions, you might be forced to put your legal name. so the application would have as PI "Dr. Hyde". and people who know you only as "Dr. Jekyll" and see your biosketch with pubs by "Dr. Jekyll" will be all wtf??
not that they won't quickly "get it" but still....
In my country, you always keep your maiden name, for pretty much everything, including hospital/maternity, even though, children receive the name of their (registered) father/husband of the mother. So when we got married, it was very natural for me to stick to my name, beside the fact that I too had already published under it. But it's quite unusual in my husband's country (some friends worry about the name they have to use for booking their honeymoon, pfff) and many people there seemed to find me (more) exotic and weird for not changing my name... it amuses me...
I kept my name, and gave it to my children as middle name.
I did not change my name when I got married, but many people that I interact with (not academics) assume that I've taken my husband's last name. That leads to the occasional odd situation where I don't notice that a mention of "Mrs. HusbandsLastName" is actually referring to me, especially since HusbandsLastName is frequently mispronounced. I always liked the idea of both husband and wife taking a new, combined last name. I might have actually tried to convince my husband to go for that if I could have come up with a new name that was as nice-sounding as Villaraigosa.
We oh-so-briefly entertained the "merged name" concept, but....well, let's just say the most viable merged name option sends people into gales of laughter. As though we merged Jekyll and Hyde to "Heckyll."
I also considered various options and ended up tacking husband's name onto my own so I officially have 2 last names. Result: confusion. Listed as his name only, my name only, neither, and the inevitable comments from people about the length of my name. It's my name. Suck it up. But it still makes me angry that I have to justify my choice to random strangers, and even to my own supervisor, who still refuses to acknowledge my name change while working in his lab. ugh.
I always find these threads interesting as I basically decided not to decide. Officially I am still FistName MaidenName, but socially I go by FistName MaidenName MarriedName (my husband has issues with the connotation of a hyphen). Interestingly this has lead to a former advisor assuming a hyphen and my being published as MaidenName-MarriedName. As a young grad student, with my first first-author publication coming up I plan to publish as FirstName MaidenName (sci-finder will still recognize the hyphened publications), my legal name. When we have children, they will be Children MarriedName and I will use MarriedName informally/socially. I was just struck by the reverse situation of your decision, neither is without complications but I thought I'd add my 2 cents in.
I did add my husband's last name as a lastname and kept my maiden name at the very last. Why?
Partly because I had published under my maiden name, partly because I 'feel like' my maiden name, partly because I still wanted to have the same name as my husband (and kids if we were to have any).
This meant that my husband's name is first of my two sirnames... and in my new country the first sirname is the most important one, whereas in my home country the last sirname is considered the 'real' one... a little confusion but not more than things that can be solved by me having a drivers licence with the married name, a credit card with my maiden name and another drivers license (from the other country) with both of the names. Then I smile and say "I have two sirnames".
Of course, all this turned out kind of like a good choice since I don't have a husband anymore but still have the two names (for a while longer due to formal reasons) but at least I didn't change completely and then published and then had to retort to the maiden name again. I mean, loosing a spouse is bad enough without adding the whole "I need to push it into peoples' faces".
I actually hyphenate my last name...which sometimes works okay, sometimes it doesn't. I did this because I had started grad school with my "maiden" name, had one publishing under that name, but got married in the midst of grad school and wanted to join the names in a more symbolic way (but my hubby did not hyphenate his last name). My in-laws don't get it and still call me "Mrs. in-law-last-name" and I am under his name in the phone book (which is a good thing, so I don't have students calling me at home). I say that it works most of the time, except when folks can't pronounce it or if there aren't enough spaces on legal documents to fit.
So far ... I am planning on keeping my name. Grad student not yet published, but I might be by the time the wedding rolls around in a year and a half. I understand the whole 'my name is from my father so still patriarchal' argument, but I also feel like my name already skips over my mother's maiden name (not to get into grandparents & beyond) and I'm closer with her family than dad's. So why would I give up even more of the heritage of my name?
Had this discussion with my wife too. I didn't think I would care until it came up, but it turns out I did. I actually almost took her name briefly, but the prospect of my parents disowning me put that to a stop. Ended up just keeping both of our "maiden" names. Children haven't come up yet, but a faculty couple I know did the following, which I think has some appeal:
If the first child is male, all children will get my name.
If the first child is female, all children will get her name.
No contingency plan for mixed-gender fraternal twins :)
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