A Rose By Any Other...?

By Dale, CC BY 2.0.

The canny-eyed among you may have noticed something strange about my Facebook profile; where, yesterday, it showed the name I shared with my husband, followed by my former name in brackets, today the order is reversed. This is because, a week ago, I changed my name by deed poll back to the name I was born with. As changing one's name back after marriage is perhaps slightly more unusual than the initial switch, I figured it was best to write a few words in explanation.

Firstly, to assuage any concerns, this is in absolutely no way indicative of any marital strife. Mr Scribetur and I continue to be as happy and (nauseatingly, some friends might say) in love as ever. Indeed, one of the motivations for this name change - or reversion - was the realisation that in this case, I really could have it all: I could continue to be just as good a life partner, whilst reclaiming the name under which I feel most comfortable.

A fair question to ask would be "well, why did you change it in the first place?" There are a several reasons, but I'll expand on the two main ones. Firstly, as many of my friends will remember, the events surrounding mine and Mr S's wedding were, to put it mildly, emotional and stressful. In the months following the wedding we faced the very real possibility that we would not be able to live together in the country that we both loved and were building careers in. At the time, taking his surname felt like a way of saying that I didn't care what the Home Office chose to do, that we belonged together and would be together in name even if they separated us in fact. I also, paranoidly, wanted to 'look' as much like a proper, committed wife as possible for a government body which I perceived as having a pretty traditional view of marriage. Looking back, I know that wasn't exactly a rational thought process but, as noted above, circumstances weren't really disposing me towards calm, dispassionate consideration.

Secondly, I was also just going with the flow. It seemed to be so uncontroversial a change that some institutions seemed to expect it as a matter of course - indeed, my undergraduate university automatically changed my name in the very short time between the wedding and the conferral of my degree results, without me even asking. Like I've said, a lot of things were pretty unstable and complicated right then, so I think part of me shrugged and just went with it as the simplest thing to do. However, the first consideration was certainly the biggest factor involved in my initial change of name.

Well, what's changed since then? For one thing, Mr S is now 'permanently settled' and well on his way to becoming a naturalised citizen, so that massive anxiety has been lifted from our shoulders. I no longer feel that I need to prove our relationship to anyone but him - and have, indeed, realised that my paranoid fear that our marriage would be deemed fake just because I hadn't changed my name was a somewhat foolish one, born out of much stress. So the greatest reason for the initial change no longer applies.

However, producing a deed poll and going through the rigmarole of changing one's name in the middle of a degree is a pretty active process, and it requires more positive motivations than just the sudden absence of a previous concern. Most importantly, I just missed my old name. I mentioned that my undergraduate university changed my name without me asking them to, which meant that, in spite of the fact that I had handed in every piece of coursework and sat every single exam under my unmarried name, my final degree certificate bore my new, married name. I attended my graduation ceremony a year after getting married, and it really, genuinely upset me that my original name was not the one called out as I processed up in gown and hood. I think I realised then that I wanted the name down the spine of my PhD to be the one I grew up with.

Secondarily, I've gradually come to realise the importance of my name to my professional identity. In one sense, this is about having a distinct professional identity from my husband - who has recently started working in the same department as me, in the same university as me, on the same subject as me, and on almost the same period. This situation is a dream come true; it's absolutely lovely both having an office in the same town, being able to travel into work together and meeting up for lunch. But this physical (and intellectual) proximity makes a shared name more noticeable, and the potential problems with it more visible. For better or worse, I want the work produced under my name to be judged by its own flaws and merits - without reference to the (far more excellent) work of my husband.

And that is the crux - under my name. I don't know if I'll be an academic forever, but I do know that I will always be writing, and hopefully publishing, something. In many cases, a surname isn't something that is used that often, or with much significance, and if this were just about the name on my bank card or driving license then I probably wouldn't bother. But my full name will appear at the top of any work I publish, and if I remain in academia, it will probably be what people I meet at conferences will remember me by. And, for me personally, it just feels right for that to be the name that it is both my old name, and my new name.