May 16th – A new AWESOME SITE you MUST SEE oh em gee, my brother’s wife, more
Firstly, there’s a new greatest site in the Universe: SadTrombone.com. IT NEVER GETS OLD.
My brother gets married tonight in Yosemite – 9:00pm EST (8:00pm CST/6:00pm PST), to be exact.
He called me today and we had a discussion about last names. Neither of us could get over the fact that his fiancee and soon to be wife will have the last name “Marshall” in a few short hours. He’d proposed doing a hyphenated name, but she didn’t want to. He also offered to change his middle name to her last name, which she also declined.
Both of us have mixed feelings about women taking our last name. It’s almost as if we’re removing a part of somebody’s identity and/or ending a family line. I don’t write this because I truly believe that to be the case or to advocate that women stop taking the names of men they marry, but rather to provide more of a glimpse into the thought process of men with a tremendous amount of Irish-Catholic guilt.
So congratulations, Jack and the soon-to-be Jill Marshall. It’s a shame that Jack isn’t taking your last name, Jill, because a name like “Jack McClellan” was made for a sports anchor who does the whole “turn around and smile” pose when his segment is promoted on the evening news.
If I ever get married (ha!), I’m going to propose that we create a new last name. This will create a new family line AND usher in a new global Renaissance.
I’m leaning towards “Flimflam” as that name. Thoughts?
It figures that the one day I take off for a Floating Holiday is the first time in like a month that the weather’s absolutely miserable.
Ah well. Off to dinner with people.
Kevin Marshall 
Your brothers name is seriously Jack….
And his wife is named Jill?
Um… Buh!?
Yes.
Additionally, the location where they married meant they had to go UP A HILL.
It seems to me that guys are particularly gung-ho on the ‘create a new name with marriage’ phenomenon. Why is that?
I don’t intend to change my name when/if I ever get married, and I didn’t realize recently why I felt that way. For a long time, I just assumed it was due to precedent. My mother never changed her name, I got the hyphenated result.
But it’s really not in my nature to do something just because my mother did. I realize it runs a little deeper than that. It goes to a ‘collective history’ mindset of a time when people who looked like me weren’t allowed to keep their names, period.
My name is who I am. It’s part of the history I’ve been given, and the identity I’ve forged. Of all the things I am willing to shift, comprimise, or change for the person I want to ostensibly spend the rest of my forseeable future with – that is not one of them.
That’s an interesting and in my mind pretty reasonable take on the whole “last name” thing considering your situation, and it honestly would never had occurred to me had you not brought it up.
I didn’t realize there was a big movement to create a new name with marriage. I mean, I was totally joking.
…then again, I think “Alistair Flimflam” is a great name for a kid.
Dude, that is an awesome name. “Alistair” anything is really an awesome name.
Tom and I had a *lot* of discussions about this- we both really wanted a family name, but I was abit torn on what it should be, and kind of put off by the cultural assumption that it should be the man’s family name that always survives. In the end though, my family is a bunch of shit-wads, and he was just so much more attached to his name than I was to mine.
Ha! Problem solved, then. Thank you, Courtney’s family, for being such complete shit-wads.
My last name is entirely too good for being called by my last name to be changed.
I don’t think I could ever cease to be “Gogan.”
The inability to yell out “go GO GOGAN!” would break my heart. I’m glad you’ve decided you’ll stick with yours when marriage comes.
I won’t change my name when I get married, and I absolutely do not like hyphenated names. While I do feel some obligation to keep the family name alive, its honestly not the entire reason I’m keeping my last name. Think of all the craziness a woman must undergo to change her name! New ID’s, new business cards… Nevermind all the confusion. Men, when married, never have the same confusion in the office that women do. Sometimes women who change their last name when married have to wait weeks for their email and business related nonsense to change over.
No, I’ll keep my name and my bubby can choose to keep his. The kids get my name…
It really IS a pain in the ass. The one thing I can suggest to ALL women is to go to SSA first when changing your name legally. You’d think people would know, but you’d be surprised.
As for the e-mail address thing, there’s people that have been working at the Institute employing me that had their last names changed a long time ago…and yet their e-mail address (our format starts with the last name and then adds the first initial) never changed. I don’t know whether that’s because the Institute won’t change a username once it’s assigned, or if people just don’t bother.
I’m just going to have my children go by their first name and first name only. Like Cher. Except I’ll give them last names for first names, like Kojak.
Alastair Kojak Flimflam is a totally bitchin’ name. You need to have kids now. RIGHT NOW.
And it shouldn’t be a pain in the ass. If this culture is patriarchal, than it should accept that woman will need to change thier name when married and the process should be as easy as possible for them. Otherwise there is a sense of hyprocracy I get erked over.
I wonder if there’s some thing in the culture? Dad always felt the same way. That’s why all the Mack clan have “Leonard” for a middle name. And, in morbid-land, he was crazy insistant that she be Barbara Leonard on the tomb stone.