Why I Haven't Changed My Name (Yet)
Our wedding day was truly the magically hazy blur everyone promised. There are few moments that stick out clearly and fully -- I remember standing across from Anthony during the ceremony equally elated, both trying to suppress giggles of pure joy. I remember surveying the reception ballroom, reflecting on the true convergence of our worlds – past, present, and future – well represented by the mingling tables and murmur of small talk. I remember the slew of friends and neighbors and cousins sharing heartfelt, tearful congratulations throughout the reception, literally lining up to grasp hands and share some of the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.
There’s another moment I won’t forget and it went something like this –
We had just finished the ceremony and were with the bridal party in a holding room waiting for the guests to clear out. Everyone was mingling and chatting and cheering and the mood in the room was unparalleled.
My mom turned to me and said, “The new Mrs. Mag…Magliz…I guess I’m going to have to learn how to really pronounce it now, huh?
“Actually, I’m not changing my name right now,” I replied. “But, I mean, you probably should still learn it.”
A CHERRY ON TOP
For most of my life, changing my name one day was not something I had ever questioned. I, too, was a little girl carrying notebooks scribbled with the last name of my latest crush. I sat at sleepovers with my girlfriends casually pairing my first name with the last names of various classmates, trying to find a good match. I had fantasized about the idea of taking someone’s last name for as long as I can remember. I remember feeling lucky that my first name was so versatile and neutral and would pair well with so many potential future last names.
When I started dating Anthony almost nine years ago, I was still absorbed in this fantasy. I still scribbled notebooks with his name. I still casually joked to my friends about how good Hayley sounded with Magliozzi. I had always dreamed of marrying an Italian boy and getting an Italian last name to boot was the perfect cherry on top of a wish fulfilled.
It wasn’t until we got engaged that I started to feel uneasy about giving up my last name so readily. What had always felt like a given suddenly felt like a choice – and a complicated one at that.
IT’S PRONOUNCED MEISE, LIKE M-EYES
For my whole life I’ve looked like a Meise. From my blue eyes and heavy eyebrows to that little bit of Irish temper that bubbles up on occasion -- all are curses of the Meise blood running through my veins. And there are a lot of us -- my dad is the fifth of nine, I’m the youngest grandchild of many, and my nephews are few of many, many great-grandchildren. Being a Meise had given me an identity that was apparent every time I looked in the mirror. But it wasn’t just physical, it also wasn’t an infrequent occurrence for me to do something (just about anything) and for my dad to remark, “Well, that’s because you’re a Meise.”
After some reflection and many tears, I came to realize that my last name wasn’t just a name to me -- it was Easter egg hunts at my grandma’s house and cotton candy popsicles in Wildwood and the smell of cigarettes on my uncle’s sweater. It was the reason I looked the way I looked and acted the way I acted. It was connection and belonging and heritage that felt so vital to who I was.
But it wasn’t just this large, loving extended family that gave the name and the decision so much weight to me. It was an inextricable part of an individual identity that I had been slowly defining since childhood. When I got the leading role in the middle school play, I did it as a Meise. When I graduated high school and moved across the country all alone only to cry through that whole first year, I did it as a Meise. When I met Anthony and fell quickly and deeply in love with every piece of him, I did it as a Meise. Every good and bad I’d done, every report card I’d ever gotten, everyone who had ever loved me had done it when I was a Meise. I wanted to enter our marriage as my whole self, to bring every part of what I was and what I am, and it felt impossible to do that fully if not as a Meise.
WHAT’S IN A NAME
We had many long conversations leading up to the wedding about what it meant to both me and Anthony for me to keep my last name. Truthfully, he wasn’t (and sometimes still isn’t) crazy about it. While I was a girl fantasizing about taking someone’s last name, he was a boy assuming he’d give his. But ultimately, keeping my last name made me feel like me and didn’t make our marriage feel any less like a family.
To be clear, I don’t hold anyone else to the yardstick of my decision. It doesn’t matter to me if you change your name or if you don’t or if you and your husband both pick a new last name together. I do think it matters, however, that everyone makes decisions that resonate with their deepest, truest feelings and that we give others space to do the same.
Maybe someday I’ll change my name and maybe I never will. Maybe when we have kids it’ll feel right to establish a shared last name. But for now, as I learn to be a partner, as we work to make a home, as we take a few confident steps along a path of forever commitment, I’ll do it as a Meise.