My Thoughts on Changing My Name

Like many of you I've gone really back and forth about changing my name. I've gone through cons like feeling like I'm losing my identity and not being thrilled at trading in my lovely and easy to spell last name for a somewhat more complicated one that doesn't go as perfectly with my current first name. I've also considered pros like how it would be nice to have the same last name as my husband and for something tangible to change once we're married as we're already pretty much married.

We've been engaged for a bit over a year now (where did that go?) and I've changed my mind about this subject a lot over the past year.

At our engagement party one year ago:



I would say that I was leaning a lot more towards not changing it for most of the year. I really like my current last name and there didn't seem to be any pressing reason to change it. Mr. Knitting didn't care, there wasn't any social pressure, no family pressure, and I just overall didn't really want to. I will say though that feminism had nothing to do with it. Either way I was going to end up with a name that was passed down by a man, so whether or not it was my father or my husband did not factor in to my decision making process.

However, despite all this, I often felt like I wanted to want to change my name. I felt like I really wanted to want to take his last name, but had to come to terms with the fact that ultimately I didn't really want to take his last name. This was tricky to deal with. I would have loved for Mr. Knitting to tell me that it was really important to him for me to take his last name because then I definitely would have wanted to change my name simply because it was important to him. Unfortunately for me, Mr. Knitting doesn't have an opinion on it and is perfectly happy with whatever I decide, which is really one of the reasons I love him so much.

Anyway, complicated ramblings aside, here's what I've decided. I'm giving myself permission to be undecided. At the moment it doesn't feel right/I'm not ready to change my name and that's fine. By the time our wedding rolls around I might feel ready to change my name and if not, oh well. I might feel like that's the right choice for me in a few years and if so I can change my name then. I don't have to make a final decision in 2 months. So I haven't decided to change my name, but I also haven't decided not to. I'm undecided and that's working for me.

Fun celebrity fact: Sarah Michelle Gellar changed her name as an 5th anniversary gift to her husband and we all know how awesome Buffy is!


Source

How are you doing with the name change decision?