I went the double-barrelled route referenced above, though technically the middle part of the name is actually a middle name. Though it's been terribly confusing trying to get that across, and nobody who knew me before knows what to call me. Enh, well. We tried to be egalitarian about it by both of us taking my name as a second middle name -- we liked the symbolism of that -- but in practice I use the name and he doesn't, so it doesn't actually look publicly very different from that standard academic compromise.
One thing I had no idea about -- if you take on an ethnically obvious last name, people who are of that ethnicity (by birth, not just by ancestry) will assume that you are also of that ethnicity. My "ethnicity by marriage" is Lithuanian, and two times I have run into Lithuanians who have been so sure I'm one of them, and I have to tell them... well, no, not even my grandparents, it's just my husband's name. Lame.
Another thing that surprised me -- and this is something others tried to tell me, and I didn't hear -- is that even though name-changing was actually my idea, I felt really weird and conflicted about it afterward, like I was wearing a false nose or something. (For instance: who but the illiterate have to learn how to sign their names as adults?) And I know from experience that name changes feel very strange to friends; I inwardly refuse to re-file any of my married friends under married names, though I don't tell them this of course. My new name is cooler than my old and I'm pretty used to it now; my in-laws are wonderful and I love the symbolic tie to them; and yet I think were I to do it again, I ... might not, actually.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-05-21 12:00 am (UTC)One thing I had no idea about -- if you take on an ethnically obvious last name, people who are of that ethnicity (by birth, not just by ancestry) will assume that you are also of that ethnicity. My "ethnicity by marriage" is Lithuanian, and two times I have run into Lithuanians who have been so sure I'm one of them, and I have to tell them... well, no, not even my grandparents, it's just my husband's name. Lame.
Another thing that surprised me -- and this is something others tried to tell me, and I didn't hear -- is that even though name-changing was actually my idea, I felt really weird and conflicted about it afterward, like I was wearing a false nose or something. (For instance: who but the illiterate have to learn how to sign their names as adults?) And I know from experience that name changes feel very strange to friends; I inwardly refuse to re-file any of my married friends under married names, though I don't tell them this of course. My new name is cooler than my old and I'm pretty used to it now; my in-laws are wonderful and I love the symbolic tie to them; and yet I think were I to do it again, I ... might not, actually.