So I was perusing the internet the other day and I came across a post on Her Bad Mother where she is stopped at the border because she and her child do not share the same last name. And she started to wonder if she should change her last name. It made me start to think about my decision not to change my last name. When we got married I always assumed that I would be a career woman. Keeping my last name, the name that all my degrees were in, keeping my own separate professional identity was very important to me. I also am very proud of my last name, it is the name of my father, his father, and his father before that. My dad once told me, and it is the same thing that his dad told him, that the only thing he had to give was his name, it came to him unblemished, and he is giving it to me unblemished and that's the way I should keep it.
I have had many identity issues in my life. I wanted to be blond. I wanted a different first name. I may have even wanted to be a boy (you know the running, jumping, not having to wear skirts!). But I have always been attached to my last name. My last name has always been an essential part of who I am.
Now that I am actually an adult and living my life... and I am not the professional woman that I wanted to be, I am actually clinging harder to my last name. As a spouse in the foreign service I do not have my own identity. I am " 's wife" Whenever I go anywhere or need anything done I don't use my name or status it is all under his information. Maybe it's silly, but keeping my last name reminds me, if no one else, that I am my own person. I have my own talents. I am separate from my husband, intelligent, and accomplished. Perhaps someday soon I will find a way to remind everyone else too.
