When I Get Married, I’m Keeping My Own Name. Or Maybe that Should Be “If I Get Married”

No, I’m not calling off the wedding, I just enjoy quoting Lisa Simpson whenever I get the chance. So, I’m keeping my own name after the wedding. You see, I am very attached to my name. It’s a weird name and no one can pronounce it or spell it properly, but I’ve had it for so long and it seems to go so well with my first name (well, as much as anything “goes” with Etta) that I can’t imagine being called anything else. I mean, Kissington is a perfectly promulant name and all, but it’s just not for me. Besides, there is something so fundamentally unequal about the idea that it’s all about the man’s name. Lord Kissington likes his name, I like mine, so we’re keeping them. No big deal, right?

I knew it might cause a little controversy, since I will be the first person in the extended Kissington clan not to embrace their husband’s name. And I’m a little surprised by that since most of the women had perfectly nice maiden names and several have traded them in for odd, hard to spell, hard to pronounce names. Buy, hey, it’s all about choice. This is a totally personal decision, and I think people should do what they want. The Kissingtons senior don’t seem to have an issue with it, and my dad is delighted that I’m keeping the family name alive.

So, basically this is a non-issue. Or at least that’s what I thought until recently. Lord Kissington and I met up with some friends of his older brother at a bar recently. One of the friends kept referring to me as Mrs. Kissington (ummh, dingus, that would actually be Lady Kissington), and Lord Kissington explained (patiently) that I wasn’t taking his name. From this gentleman’s reaction, you would think I had just announced that I would be spending the wedding night servicing the Green Bay Packers and my new husband could just wait his damn turn. He followed me around for the next half-hour, drunkenly pleading with me to take my future husband’s name because “he’s a great guy and you should just do it.” Oh, wow, dude, I never thought of it that way. I am so convinced. My polite protests fell on deaf ears and he just became ever more belligerent on the topic. Sigh. Why do people feel they have to the right to question my decision, but no one ever suggests that Lord Kissington might want to take on the Tiara family name? I’ve explained to people that in the Middle Ages, when an up and coming young man married an heiress, he and the children would often take her family name, since it was usually a more socially prominent one (I'm not trying to say that my name is more prominent, but we do have a crest. Just sayin'.). I actually tried to use that argument with the drunk guy, but he was far beyond comprehending medieval social practices at that point. I can’t wait until the wedding when everyone calls starts calling me Mrs. Kissington, and I have to say (politely, of course. I do everything politely.), “No, it’s still Ms. Tiara.” Our thank you notes are printed with both of our names, so perhaps that will get the point across. I don’t mind people thinking that I might be Mrs. Kissington, but I do get a bit annoyed at the automatic assumption that I will be. Really, keeping one’s own name is hardly so unusual these days, is it?