About My New (Old) Last Name

On reclaiming an identity I never planned to lose

You may have noticed that I have a new last name. Or, more accurately, I once again have my old last name, the last name I had for the first 28 years of my life.

I never really wanted to change my last name. For one, I liked the name I had. It just seemed so strange to change it, to alter my identity in such a fundamental way, to get used to a new blend of vowels and consonants rolling off my tongue.

Also, changing my last name was a lot of work. I’d already put a lot of work into my wedding and now I had yet another marriage-related project that only peripherally included my new husband. I had to take PTO to visit the social security office, then make countless phone calls and provide all sorts of documentation. I even had to mail a copy of my marriage certificate to Southwest Airlines so I could still have access to the miles I’d accrued.

There was another reason I was hesitant about the change. I had a book published, albeit by a very small publisher, under my original name. I planned to write more books, and I didn’t want my dozen readers who weren’t related to me to get confused. (I don’t actually know if I had a dozen readers who weren’t related to me. A stranger did once message me on Facebook to tell me that the book changed her…