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Transcript of the convo with my aunt:Submitted by vkitty17 on Sat, 08/30/2008 - 2:32am.
My name is Valorie Engholm (I'm okay giving my full name on here because I'm also a musician and would like to promote my music, go to www.myspace.com/valorieengholm. Go go shameless promotion!) Okay, so my name is Valorie Engholm. That's the name my dad gave me when I was born. I changed it for a brief time when I was married the first time, but decided I really liked "Engholm", was really attached to it, and I wanted to keep it. But my aunt made this check out to someone named "Valorie Mitchell" and sent it to me, intending to pay for wedding flowers. Now, I know what she was getting at. I married a guy with the last name "Mitchell", therefore, my name must be "Valorie Mitchell". So, I called her. Here is the conversation: ME: Did you know that my name is Valorie Engholm? AUNT: You mean you didn't go with "Mitchell"? ME: No! Of course not! I'm the only Valorie Engholm in existence on the planet. If I change my name, she will be extinct. AUNT: Well, that's kind of selfish, don't you think? ME: How so? AUNT: Well, if you two wanted to join together as one like you said you wanted to with your wedding ceremony, then you should have the same last name. ME: Well, then he should be "Matt Engholm". AUNT: Well he's not doing that, and you're not changing your name, so this isn't going to work. ME: Yeah, we should just get divorced! I mean, we can't even agree on a name! In fact, we can't even agree on dinner! s.i.l.e.n.c.e. ME: Why don't you want me to be Valorie Engholm anymore? AUNT: Oh, it just makes things easier. ME: How does it make things easier? I have to get a new driver's license, a new social security card, a new bank card, I have to change my name with payroll at work... AUNT: Well you changed it the last time you got married and it didn't bother you. ME: Yes it did! It was a pain in the ass to change all that stuff! I'm never doing that again! AUNT: Well... uh... mmph... ME: My name is Valorie Engholm. That's my name and I like it. AUNT: Okay, so what are you guys havin' for dinner? (obvious change of subject) ME: We're going for Mediterranean... AUNT: No! You should be cooking dinner! ME: Who should be cooking dinner? OH MY GOD! This used to be my open-minded super-fun screw-what-the-world-thinks aunt! Oh my god! I can hear her gossiping about me now: "Valorie always has to be different" and other such crap. I like my name, I'm keeping it. I used to twig out at stuff like this but I've relaxed on it. When people call me Mrs. husband's-last-name I respond to it, and I no longer jump bad at folks about it. I had a lot of reasons for keeping my name but at the end of the day it boils down to this: it's my birth name and I don't see why I should have to change it. I do use my husband's last name for some of my writing; it's my sci-fi pen name my mama blog I mean, I'm married to Mr. Mitchell, so if someone who doesn't know us wants to call me Mrs. Mitchell, I don't freak out. I signed the guest book at the b and b on our honeymoon "Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell". I'll just politely re-introduce myself as Ms. Engholm if I feel they need to know. Otherwise, who cares what strangers call me. It bugs me when it's my own family though. I mean, these are people I'm going to be in contact with for the rest of my life, I think they need to respect my choice. If I wanted to change my name to Talula Jones, I would expect my family to abide. It's my name, not theirs. It's just so surprising because my aunt has NEVER been the type to judge or to goad anyone into doing the traditional thing. It's from her that I learned that you need to do what you want and who care what other people think! She has gotten way close minded in her old age. Remember the post where she wigged out when I told her I was having a shower and bridesmaids! At my second wedding! Oh my god! How dare I? I wasn't challenging your right to feel the way you do, nor do I think you are wrong for getting upset about it. Just giving my viewpoint. I'll be married to Mercury Man 10 years next year...after a near decade of going through this, I discovered it's not worth my while to get upset about it or take it personally. I feel you though. my mama blog ok cool! I though I'd offended you for a second, just making sure my mama blog I'm offended that you think I would be offended! What a jerk-hole! Okay, just kidding. I'm offended that you would kid around and play offended at being offended!! how dare you! You suck! ha ha we are so silly my mama blog hear hear! to each their own! i dunno why the name change thing is such a big deal to people. you either do it or you don't. i hate all the judgment that is attached to either choice. like, oh - i know what kind of woman YOU are because you did/didn't take your husband's last name. PALEEEEEASE. i took hal's last name because i don't have an attachment to my maiden name - HATFIELD. i was also sick of the jokes that everyone made when they heard my last name. it was a relief to finally get rid of it! for me it was a no brainer, i'd take hal's last name, my initials are still the same (MAH), and i'd be proud to call myself mrs. harmon. if i had any kind of attachment to my bio-dad or my last name (like, it sounded kewl) i'd have kept it and hal would not have cared. "We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong." - Laura Stavoe Harm makes me think of Juliana Hatfield, who I had a massive crush on in college, so all good associations for me! Cool about your initials staying the same. is probably what they joked to her about, bleh my mama blog LOL! Yep. You got it. Every fucking time someone heard it for the first time. Double bleh. LOL! "We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong." - Laura Stavoe Harm I've never had to have this conversation, I think all my family know I'm quite capable of telling them to go to hell, if they tried!!!! I would never change my name, and when I mentioned this to the Wee Papa at some point in our pre-married life, he looked at me in horror and said, I'd never marry someone who *would* change their name! It always makes me a little sad when women do change their name. I mean, everyone should be able to make their own choice, yes. But it would make me feel better if men chose to change *their* names just as often as women. But that doesn't happen very often. For me, so many of these male-female dynamics were revealed as goofy traditions, if not downright sexist/misogynistic/paternalistic, because of my queerness. When I was in a long-term relationship with a woman, we never had these kind of issues and so it seems clear that they only come up when there's some kind of power imbalance, either real or perceived by the couple or by society (granted, this kind of thing can happen in same-sex relationships too, it just didn't in my case). Anyway, I try really hard not to be all judgy, since I'm trying to do that more in my life. Some people really hate their last names and/or have no ties to the person who gave them that name and are relieved to change it- this happened with one of my oldest friends, her last name was her dad's, who disappeared from her life when she was just a wee little one and it *was* kind of ugly, so she never looked back when she changed her name. I can respect that. The different last name thing with kids...eh, it doesn't bother me at all. Kids know what family they belong to for reasons other than their last name, you know? The Wee will have either my name or The Wee Papa's name, depending on what sex it is (the boys name goes better with his last name and the girls name goes better with mine). And then should we have another child, it will have the the alternate last name. That's the plan, anyway. I'd never marry someone who *would* change their name! Oh my god! That is EXACTLY the sentence Sexy Hubby uttered to me we when we had the same discussion! I think it's a good, match, don't you? I hope whoever I want to marry thinks like that...*sighs dreamily.* There's two of us and one of him/her, so the partner gets to change surnames, not me/us. Period, end of discussion. And there will be no hyphenating. Lesmeister? Long enough for my taste, thankyouverymuch. 24/MN. Queer, veg, single, AP mama to DD1. When you first described Mitch on hipmama, I thought he reminds me of The Wee Papa! That's why I've always rooted for you and Mitch! here's a funny story, sorry nate... Dix-Babcock, no way! And yeah, the weird thing about family is that they are in your life whether you like it or not because they are family, but that doesn't mean they will always share your view on life, you know? It was hard for me to explain to her why I wasn't changing my name, but at the same time it's hard for me to understand why she would want me to. my best friend got married in may, and she says she had no intention of changing her last name. until, that is, she and her new husband realized that they had received *many* wedding gifts in the form of checks made out to them with the same last name. he tried to cash some of them on his own, but the bank informed him that she would either need to prove that she was who the check was written out to, or they couldn't get their money!! bullshit, right?? so, she ended up changing her name to his. now, i'm assuming there must be *some* way to get around shit like this, so maybe she wasn't really completely opposed to changing her name in the first place. but, either way, i think it's a little presumptous that people just automatically wrote checks out to "the parkers" without making sure first that it was (both of) their names! i think about the name issue alot because my daughter has my last name, not BDs. i was never really too keen on the idea of taking a man's name based solely on tradition, but now that it affects my daughter it's alot easier to stick by it. i don't want her to ever be the only member of her family with a different last name, so if the day ever comes that i get married i'll be keeping our last name. that also makes the future a little tricky, though; like, what about when i have more kids some day?? i would want all my kids to have the same last name, but how would my future husband feel about me and the kids having a different last name than him?! dude, i am a rambling FOOL right now! sorry, V, i got carried away! my mother-in-law kept her married name after she divorced my husband's bio father, because she thought she and her kids should have the same last name. My husband is very close to his 'step' father, and my kids are very close to their 'step' grandpa. And we are/were all very close to his parents (his dad has passed on), their 'step' great-grandparents. In a way it's kind of sad to me she felt/feels so strongly on this issue...she's been stuck with the name of a man who was a horrible husband and who abandoned his kids, rather than take her birth name back or the name of the man who has loved her and taken care of her kids all these years... my mama blog my father is a fucked up sociopath with all kinds of mental illness....he was a substance abuser, was abusive to my mom, disappeared when i was about 5 and was totally MIA until about a year ago when someone in my family found him and we had a weird, uncomfortable reunion. but i would *probably* never change my last name, because it's MINE. i forget that it's only my name because it was his first; i think of it as part of my own personal identity and not something that came from somewhere else. weird, right?? i'd have thought that i'd be itching to get rid of this last name, but i actually like it! and as far as the love not being in the name, i definitely agree. i just, for some reason, would not want to have more children and give them a different last name than monkeygirl's....i always had a different last name than my half brother and sister, and i think that's what always made them stand out in my mind as HALF siblings. it shouldn't have ever mattered, but growing up i always wished that we all had the same last name. i wanted a sense of unity, but i realize that unity does NOT come from a name; it was just a childhood attitude toward the name issue that i can't seem to shake now. i guess someday when/if i ever get married, i'll figure the whole thing out then. but i hope i end up marrying someone who's openminded about the whole issue and doesn't get all huffy when i'm not like "yay! now me and monkeygirl get a new name!" although, i'd probably never end up with someone who'd get huffy about names.... sheesh, i'm rambling, AGAIN. it's like my mind and fingers are connected, and everything i think is coming out. can't stop...help! argh! |
who are these people (I am talking about people in general, because I have had to deal with a lot of *these people*) who feel like this is any of their business AT ALL??
If you want to name yourself Lovely Clover Rainbow or Shiva Bodhisattva or Mike Smith just because you felt like it, then why the hell not?
Look, I changed my name because I always hated my last name. People gave me shit for THAT ("oh, you're just falling into the paternalistic trap blah blah blah) -- no, it's because my last name was a body part and I was sick and damn tired of all of the jokes. I gave my kid a Spanish name and people gave me shit for that too (a work colleague that I wasn't even that friendly with told me it sounded like a character in a Mexican soap opera, wtf??).
The point is, when you get married just as when you have kids, everyone's head goes straight into their lower intestines and they begin to act like idiots and talk too much shit. I'm sorry you are dealing with this and I am so proud of you for standing up to people.
Hang in there.