When I got divorced last year, it made sense for me to keep my married name. I got married during graduate school, so my entire post-education career had been conducted under that name. It was my daughters’ last name and I had no intention to ask them to change it. It would be simpler to deal with school and other organizations if the girls and I shared a name. I felt no particular attachment to my maiden name.
I asked my soon-to-be ex-husband whether he had any objections to my keeping his last name. He thought I was nuts for asking. “It’s your name,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you keep it?”
It was settled. I signed the divorce papers and called a realtor. I wasn’t going to go through the mess of changing my name.
A few months later, Alan’s custody instability came to light and I threw my hat into the ring to be his forever Mommy. As it turned out, the US permanent residency (“green card”) that I had held for 8 years would be inadequate for the purposes of adoption. I would have to live in the UK with him for 2 years to be able to bring Alan into the US as my child after adopting him under British law. While I wasn’t completely against that option, my support network was here in Texas. The alternative was to become a US citizen and then adopt Alan using the Hague process for international adoption, which would allow me to sponsor him for immigration immediately. I elected to pursue the second path.
On the citizenship application, I was once again given the option to legally change my name. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Would it be weird to give Alan my ex-husband’s last name? After all, they were no longer related. Or were they?
I thought about this whole thing much too hard. I asked every one of my close friends their opinions and everyone had a different perspective. One friend thought I was silly for worrying about it. My married name was my name and no longer had anything to do with my ex, so why wouldn’t I share it with an adopted son? Another wondered whether it would be best to have Alan keep the last name of his birth, given that this would be a kinship adoption. Another friend suggested that I go back to my maiden name, which is also Alan’s birth mother’s maiden name, in a gesture of respect and continuity to his birth family. Yet another friend suggested that I create an altogether new last name for myself, Alan and my daughters, symbolically creating an altogether new family.
I had too many choices and couldn’t choose, so I took the lazy route and kept my married name.
I’m glad I did. Had I changed my name, only to now find myself without custody of Alan, my new name would have been a constant thorn. Of course I think about Alan all the time as it is, but I can’t help thinking that every time I wrote my new name, whatever it might have been, there would be a big hole within it where I had hoped Alan would be.
Photo Credit: Sadia
