One of the issues I'm most passionate about in weddings and marriage is name changing. Not because I think everyone should do it one way (far from it), but because I think it's an extremely complicated issue for most women (even if the complication is, "I want to change my name and I feel fine about it; SHOULD I feel fine about it?") and it's an issue most men don't even think about. In my most passionate plea on the subject I wrote Name Changing: Don't Be Quiet About It, trying to get us all to make a personal issue into one our partners, and hopefully society, shared. So, I'm just beyond thrilled to give you Tristan (a huge APW reader!), the groom in last week's joyful courthouse wedding, writing about taking his wife's last name. His post goes to the heart of partnership and the real emotional power of names.

Erika and I, like many readers of APW, slid gently into engagement rather than in one momentous display. First came discussions about whether either of us was even in favor of marriage (previously, we were both firmly opposed—funny how finding the right person changes your mind on that subject). We discussed conceptual children and what became very real plans to move across the country. There is still some disagreement between us whether I asked her to take her name (her contention) or if she beat me to the punch (which is the clear memory that I have) but not long after we decided to get married, before we even announced it to the world, we knew I'd be taking her last name. It wasn't a very fraught decision. I know it's supposed to be a big deal for the husband to take the wife's name, but for us it just wasn't. We wanted to share a name to symbolize that we were a family together, and since we'd both come of age in pretty strong queer communities, we knew we didn't have to abide by anyone's rules but the ones we made for ourselves. We didn't really get any push back from the people in our lives, and while my parents were a little reticent at first, they recognized that there wasn't any reason I shouldn't take Erika's name other than “tradition.”

The whole process was complicated by neither of us using our birth names in our day-to-day lives. Her “last name” was her professional last name (she's an actor), which she hadn't yet gotten around to legally changing. This was another reason for me to take her name; Erika had already established a professional identity under that name. For her, that name was her brand. If that been the only issue, we could have just selected her stage name for both of us when we signed the marriage license. But I had been using a different first name for over twenty years (anyone who learned my legal first name tended to be baffled by how wrong it was for me), so clearly, this was an opportunity for us to get all our names changed in one fell swoop. I would change my entire name, first and last, and when we married she would “take” her own professional name.

In California, at least, changing your name through the courts (which I had to do because I was changing my first name as well as my last) is a fairly involved and somewhat expensive process. I got advice from a transwoman I work with, but she'd done it years ago with assistance from the transgender law center, and so some of her experience was glossed over and out of date. In June I filled out the numerous forms. I paid a lawyer to look them over and was glad I did; as with any legal document there was plenty to get wrong. Another $400 and a month later I had a court date, then two months more, to give time to publish my name change for six weeks in a local weekly (another $100). (As late as 2007, this was the only way a man in California could take his wife's name; at over $600 dollars vs. $80, one could see why it would get challenged under the equal protection clause). However, as I was changing both my given name and my surname, that victory for equality in the California court system did not, alas, help me. Continue reading Reclaiming Husband: The Name Game