My husband is not keen on changing his name, and we both agree that hyphenation is stupid and unsustainable. I'm fine with giving the kids his name because it's just simpler. He doesn't care At All what I do with my name, so it's been all up to me. My middle name is my mom's maiden name, so adding another last name in the mix makes the situation just as ridiculous as multiple generation hyphenation. Dropping her name would feel just as sexist as dropping my dad's, and dropping my dad's just to be different feels unfair too. When I went to the wedding of a certain Thetan commander and heard she planned to "take his name socially, but not change anything legally," I decided "yeah, right on, that's a great idea, that's exactly what I'll do."

But I haven't had any particular social situations in the past couple of years where I might be introduced as Mrs. W, so I effectively haven't changed the name at all. Also, the Reasonable Excuse I gave to all the family members--scientific publications--kind of evaporated when I failed to publish before I married. A family member on the other side asked me "why don't you want to be a W?" which seemed rather unfair to me. I actually run into the issue most often at fencing. People hear that I'm married, and since the husband is rarely at my fencing events these days, they've asked me whether all sorts of random people are my husband. A couple of fencing parents I know were actually arguing about whether I should take his name at a recent tournament: hippy mom stands up for my name, jolly dad says it's dumb to fight tradition. Sometimes I wish I did have his name, just to show them what it is, while he's so far away in England and all. Then again, I'd have to buy new equipment/patch the printing with My name.

This airplane issue has me worried now, too. Especially because our kids (when we get around to making them) will be rather more Chinese than I am.