Whose Name is Mine?

The decision, the display of options, and the complications in adopting a new, married name.

field of daisies in expressionist style

I was naive to think that desires were the preface to our decisions, that wishes blew everything into existence. To imagine a field of daisy was to see all the potential in a life. Now I see it like this: decisions—they await us in the weeds.

I am newly married and have been receiving questions about my name for some time now. These questions can be shaped like softballs, tossed gently in my direction. Though sometimes they blink at me, red and halting like stoplights interjecting into the movement of conversation. My responses usually ramble, and that may be because I don’t want to change my name, and yet, I don’t want to keep it, neither. But before this exposition is drawn out as a matter of A vs. B, I’ll just say this: the options are not the problem. Because no matter the question, no matter the inquisitor, therein lingers a curiosity of the most molecular kind: does what I want have anything to do with my name, and is what I want meant to shape my decision?

A woman stepping into marriage is moving through an identity shift, and today, the changing of her name means many things. For some, a new name grants visa toward a hopeful, promised land; it may merely be a ticket out of hell. A new name changes who you have always been, stopping and starting through the leverage of words and legal documentation. It’s a conundrum, an opportunity, a burden, a gift. I see each of these frameworks, and the issue is not that I cannot align my worldview with one of them, it’s that I am akin to them all. The tricky part, for myself and any other woman with the proposition and pen in her hand, is that I am to consider every possibility in how it might be anointed by my own desires.

Convention must now share the stage with something else entirely—individualism or feminism, perhaps—and I am in my captain’s chair judging the performance of each argument. Although it ultimately is a question of identity, now that it is a choice, the space between each option is what darkens the problematic shadow, what sparkles the crown under the spotlight. Yes, choice is what has granted me this problem to solve, though ultimately, if I make my point clearly here, you’ll understand that walking back from that freedom is not my proposed solution.

Is identity an earned acquisition, or something you pluck off the shelf of available options? It certainly wasn’t the bet I thought I was making when I fell in love with the man I now call my husband: that when we fall in love, we’ll land in a new identity and then pick a new name if we want to. Alas, what bizarreness in that exchange! That to change your name is to accept the temporality of your life in order to make room for someone else’s legacy; to simultaneously observe impermanence and history. On your way to matronhood, is there any time for the futility of wants? Though many are lucky to lead with them, the shopping experience inevitably clouds my wants in analysis. I just want to light a cigarette and curl up in the cloak of convention. Give me my crown of daisies and call me lazy! After all, decisions are the inspiration, before they are the content of our dreams.

Unique name change resolutions trended throughout the decade of my life when friends and acquaintances becoming married overlapped with my participation in social media. I don’t know how the overall historical data might trend, but back then on the internet, I saw people I knew get married and their name updated as digital aftermath. Perhaps the number of abstentions remained marginal, but the cyber spaces for proclamation was novel. Some girls remained defiant and did nothing. Some girls played tricks with grammatical punctuation. Some girls made entirely different choices, packed up their romantic baggage and travelled toward some far off land of individual expressionism. I digress.

When you start to think about changing your name, you start to think about where it came from, which quickly brings you to the image of your parents under fluorescent hospital lighting, bathing in the beeping tones of machinery with their first gift to you as a human being. Could your name mean anything if it belonged to someone else before it became yours? Could the meaning of family extend beyond the limit of a burden, the limit of a gift? Is our entire life the wish of decisions, breathed into what we’re called? Let me ground my thoughts in a mapping of options.

Nicole Herron

I sprout wings, become a bird. I am a bird flying in a long line of other birds.

Nicole Jones

Can you get married and carry your father, and his father, and every preceding father… and simultaneously carry yourself? You definitely cannot also carry your husband, especially if he is nowhere to be found on your photo ID.

Nicole Jones-Herron

The masking tape of names. The logotype of duality dreams. A silent verbal speed bump. An additional nuisance to the completion of paperwork, to the percussion through a medical form on an iPad at the doctor’s office.

Nicole Purple

I become the flag I stake into my fleeting, little life. While purple may be the most fantastic color, it remains arbitrary against the meaning I personally bestow upon it. Everyone is purple, and so no one is, and so no one should ever name themselves purple!

Of course, the ironic value in this whole equation is that in the event I too might have a child awaiting the gift of their name, it would presumably stem from the names of its makers—myself included. So all of a sudden this decision feels like quantum mechanics and I have mapped myself into an infinite future full of generations. But I never even made it to Pre-Calculus; and if I get through this decision and still manage to have a kid, my head might implode. Essentially it’s this: I’m embarrassed to acknowledge that this concern surrounding my name suggests I am hoping it might mean something one day. This is an unlikely hope for any of us 7 billion people on this earth to carry. But, it is, I suppose, the only thing I want: I want my name to mean something.

But back to decision-making. We know that daisies are also classified as weeds, and I would say that many (if not all) decisions are disguised as such. I concede that I envy anyone who enacts with ease; those who make a choice according to their desires and promptly collect the appropriate supporting documents. I have to write an essay first. And who knows if I’ll even get it done after that.

Do I want to be Mrs. hyphen, the girl with the permanent verbal hairpin? Do I want to confuse the mailman? Do I want to stand alone, and forever explain myself and my name like I’m answering to some outré tattoo? Do I want to file a trivial stack of paperwork that is of the most serious kind? No. I want none of these things. But decision time has arrived.

Alas, I will present to you my new name! Or, at least, sometime soon—I dare you to begin the chore of changing your name and tell me that it is not unsettling! I think I have decided. I think I have chosen my new name. But I'll need to actually do the paperwork first. My next wish, please: if Phase I is the decision, let Phase II be the act.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. What do you think of choices? Did you change your name? Wish me luck on the paperwork and I’ll blow out every daisy wishing easy decisions for us all!

-Nicole TBD