A Cara by any other name would still smell as sweet, right?

“don't give me your name please.”





This was the entirety of an email sent to me by my new (as of May) husband Dave. It was the end of a string of emails between my and my mom (Dad and Dave were cc’d on all the back and forth) about the weather up in Maine where we are going to visit my parent this weekend.

I was completely confused by his email (maybe more discerning readers aren’t) and called him. Turns out that somewhere in the email string he saw “Cara and Dave deBeer” and thought that I’d changed the name field to “Cara and Dave deBeer” to show as sender on my own emails. deBeer is my last name, not his (I did not take his name when we got married) and Dave was, understandably, objecting to his wife inflicting her last name on him when he was quite happy with his own – particularly when said wife had not changed her name on marriage. In fact, I hadn’t actually made any changes to my name on email and the misunderstanding was quickly cleared up – in her Blackberry contacts lists, my mom has an entry for “Cara and Dave deBeer” (her little joke) which apparently has my personal email listed as the primary email for that entry.

So no problems, right? Right, but I thought it was interesting enough to write about since he’s also mentioned that he’s a little weirded out when he gets called “Mr. deBeer” at the vet. (All four cats have my last name, since I’m generally the one who does the cat/vet wrangling – a division of labor topic all on its own, but not in this post.) And then I thought how interesting it is that his reaction is so different to my own – I’m pretty sure this year that we’ll get Christmas cards addressed to Mr and Mrs Dave’sLastName, and probably my letters from older relatives (not that I have many left) will be sent to Mrs. Cara Dave’sLastName, even though I’m still Ms. Cara deBeer – and all of that stuff is so not worth getting worked up over, even though it blithely ignores my own conscious choices and reasons not to take my husband’s name. They’re letters and Christmas cards – it’s really okay with me here to accept these well wishes in the loving spirit they are written. In different circumstances, yeah, I’d be pissed, but social niceties like this are not worth losing sleep over.

Anyway, so Dave finds the experience of being associated with his spouse’s name disconcerting because he’s so unprepared for it, while as a girl, I’ve been prepared for it all my life by a million cultural inculcations, and my job is to pick my battles. Being addressed as “HisLastName” on letters? Not worth it. Defending my decision to a (male) friend not to take his name: worth it. “But my wife changed her name!” he said, when I awkwardly explained what a pain in the ass it is to change one’s name across credit cards and bank accounts and email accounts and insurance policies and and and … and I don’t want to, basically. Valid reasons aside, I didn’t want to change my name. My friend’s attitude was pretty much like, “If my wife did it, you can do it!” Which misses the point: I didn’t change my name to Dave’s last name because I didn’t want to.

I like deBeer. It has been my name all my life. I am attached to it, quirky capitalizations and questions about association with certain famous diamond purveyors* aside. And Dave feels the same about his last name, which is why it’s strange for him at the vet and coming across it unexpectedly in someone’s contact list – those are instances where his choice not to take my name is ignored, for one reason or another. (I should specify: I’m writing about this because it occupies a lot of my headspace, but I don’t think it’s more than a mosquito on the windshield for Dave; he’ll probably have forgotten about the whole thing or wonder why I’m making such a big deal out of it by the time he gets around to reading this.)

And here’s the kicker: this is really about choice, and respect. I have another friend who has changed her email name display so it now reads “Mrs. HerFirstName HisLastName”, which is cool, although I personally think including Mrs. is an unnecessarily formal display on an email. But she wants to emphasize her own choice, which is, again, cool. Lots of my friends have gotten married and are now Mrs. HisLastName. Others are still Ms. HerLastName. Some men are now Mr. HerLastName. And as long as everyone understands and respects the choices of others, I have no problem with any of it.

Writing all this has made me think that A) this really written from, and about, hetero marriages, which is my perspective, but B) I wish I knew how gay people dealt with this and C) I really wish gay marriage was legal in more states than MA and CA, so I’d have a bit more information and a valuable perspective outside of the whole patriarchal name-goes-down-the-male-line stuff that heteros get shunted into when they marry.

Update: when I re-read that last sentence, I realized that it read as if I was lamenting the availability of gay marriage for my own sake. I think gay marriage should be legal all over because that's what's fair. And as a nice side bonus, it would provide me with more models of marriage to look at and learn from than just the standard hetero one.

* no relation. It's a coincidence I and that company both have Dutch roots from a century ago. And yes, I disapprove of that company's despicable human rights practices and price fixing and attempts to gain a monopoly on the gem market as much as you do.