What's in a name?

When I was very little, I was bothered by the fact that my Mother and I had different last names. I guess I sort of wonder why it is that she never changed mine to hers sometime when I was a toddler and it was clear that my father had disappeared forever. I think I am also a little confused at to why I never asked...I was certainly aware at a young age that I had been essentially abandoned by my father.

When I was a teenager, my Mother married and changed her name. It was actually a good thing that I never had her maiden name, because it meant that I was never pressured to change my name with her. While I can acknowledge the importance that my mother's husband had in sobering her up, providing me with one dynamite little sister and taking a whole lot of abuse from my mother in abetting my running away from home, the truth is that we never really got along great, and I would have fought tooth and nail against taking his last name.

When I was in my early 20's, I finally found out the truth about my name...that it was misspelled, and that it really belonged to no one. I met my wonderful paternal family, and thought about changing my name to the correct spelling. However, doing so seemed like it was acknowledging the contribution of the provider of that name (my father) that I was unwilling to recognize. He didn't earn the right for me to bear his name.

In my mid 20's, I took in my little sister, and became sensitive to the fact that we had different last names. Suddenly, taking my mother's married name didn't seem like such a bad idea...it really would have been me taking Munchkin's name, not my mother's or her husband's. And to be honest, my opinion of the provider of that name (my mother's husband) had improved since my initial hesitation to take his name. But having different names never bothered Munchkin, so it never seemed like a pressing enough issue to go through all of the trouble.

And now, I am once again faced with the prospect of a new name. The Boy's name is a perfectly fine name that I happen to like very much. I even have a regular reader/commenter who married within the last year or so that had the same name before she took her husband's. I don't have a middle name, so I could very easily take my own last name and make it my middle name, taking his. One more powerful reason...inside my tummy, there is a little creature with newly formed fingers that will have his name as well.

Suddenly, though, I find myself attached to my bastardized, oft-considered, misspelled, mongrel of a last name. I like that I don't have to share it with anybody else. I like that it is a symbol of my own independence. I like that it has a story. I like that it only has three different letters and that I am early in the alphabet. I am ambivalent about the most famous previous owner of my name once shooting a key figure in American history;-).

For his part, The Boy doesn't care. He agrees with my basic dislike of hyphenated names, but has no insecurities about my having to take his name. I am OK with anyone who wants to call me Mrs. Boy or Accidentally Boy or whatever. And there is a very good chance that I will, at some point, be ready to give up my own name and take his officially. Just not yet.

Once, a long time ago, I wrote that "My name doesn't belong to anyone." Well, it turns out that I was wrong about that.

My name very much belongs to someone.

It belongs to me.