Sean and Jess Move to NYC

Today I became another person, in a sense. Today I officially changed my last name to that of my new husband.

It was a rather odd experience. I mean, I’m used to my name … I’ve been using it for more than … well … let’s just say I’ve had it a long time. I’ve had a life-time of dealing with the side-effects of having that name too. For instance: the way people always seemed to mispronounce it. Even when I gave them little rhymes:

It’s Keil, and rhymes with Smile!!
or:
I’ll think you’re a heel, if you call me Keel!!!

Or else I’d explain how the vowel sounds mirror those in the name Stein - Keil - Stein - Everyone knows how to pronounce Stein, right??  … so remembering how to pronounce Keil shouldn’t be that hard, right? Right?? Wrong. Oh well.

I got used to people mispronouncing my name pretty quick: I decided there were more important things to worry about than correcting every single person who inadvertently said my name wrong. Perhaps I got too lackadaisical about it, however; I think there have been a few people whom I’ve known for quite a while who’ve always pronounced my name to rhyme with Peel … and I have never corrected them. I hope they’ll forgive me, I never meant to leave them out of the inner circle of those-who-say-my-ex-last-name-correctly … to be honest, I never kept track. My real friends know me by just a single name: Jess.

The other side-effect of having my former last name was closely associated with two other phenomenon: growing up in a small town, and being the youngest of seven children of rather social parents. I always knew that *look* people would get, when they found out my last name: “Oh!” they’d say, “Are you related to …..?”  And of course, I was. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing: my older siblings didn’t owe people money and my parents weren’t the “bad neighbor” sorts of people who would borrow your gardening tools and forget to return them. My family was nice, your average small-town, help-a-neighbor-shingle-the-roof sort of family. People invited us to barbecues and we reciprocated.

As you can see, my last name has never brought any sort of horrible trauma to my life … it’s just been my name for a very long time, and I was used to it. It’s short and simple, and I never had to deal with the trauma of a filling out forms, only to find it did not have enough spaces for the sheer superfluity of letters making up my moniker. Oh yes, I was one of the lucky ones.

And now, it is the twenty-first century, and now the social rules have changed regarding marriage. I didn’t have to change my last name when I got married. I could have even hyphenated. Shoot, we could have gone uber-modern and had Sean take on MY last name … and then, perhaps, I could have had some fun calling him my “little lady” … but no, none of that really appealed to me. I wanted to take Sean’s last name, but not for reasons one might expect.

I didn’t feel any particular pressure from family or friends to take on my husband’s name; they know me better than to have even tried bothering me about it, had they wanted to. Besides, my family is pretty laid back about that kind of thing. I mean, our last name is fine and all, but we’re not geneological-nuts who want to trace back the proud history of those four letters as used by generation upon generation of farmers and laborers, though it is rather fun to note I have a past relation among Swedish royalty—on the wrong-side-of-the-sheets, as they say—but that was on my mother’s side of the family (Nelson), so there was no Keil DNA involved in that little indiscretion anyway. Nope, we’re not the pedigree-sportin’ sort. *cough* Where’s my crown?!?

So why *did* I do it … why did I go into the DMV and the Social Security Administration office with that certified copy of the marriage license, check a few boxes and fill in a few blanks, and then sign my brand-new-very-messy-not-at-all-well-practiced last name to make it all official; why did I do it?

(On an unrelated note: Sean says I look kind of pissed in my new driver’s license photo. Perhaps it was because I felt the stress of signing with a signature that was not yet my own, not executed with the sort of mindless muscle memory formed only by long habit and an impatience for writing checks.)

Why did I change my name?

Aesthetics, and sentimentality. It’s as simple as that.

I love poetry. I love the rhythm of language. I love the music that well-matched vowels can make (assonance), so that even unrhymed poetry—free-verse, ala Shakespeare, or in its more modern incarnation, Rap and spoken-word—which might not normally appeal to your average Hallmark-poetry-aficionado will catch my ear and worm its way into my brain, and there repeat its subtle, relentless measures, and settle, contentedly, in subtle syncopation with the mostly steady, patient, honest beating of my heart.

I love how it sounds. Jessica Mannion—a dactyl, a trochee—two poetic metric feet combined with a softly pleasing collection of vowel sounds … I don’t know: it sings to me. Isn’t that shallow? I guess it is, but hey my beloved loves me when I wax rhapsodic about all the poetry-type-stuff I love, not because he loves poetry, he doesn’t, but he loves that I love it … which is somehow better.

It’s surprising, sometimes, when you think about the reasons behind why you do what you do. It was surprising to me that I actually wanted to take on a new last name — my old last name worked fine: it was strong, it was solid, and also capricious, because the question of pronunciation kept things exciting, ya know? There was always a certain sadistic part of me that enjoyed correcting the occasional individual on the pronunciation of my last name: but I did that only when I wanted to make a point, it wasn’t because I really gave a damn. It’s just a name, after all.

But I really love my new last name, and I love that I find it surprising, still, that it is  now mine. It lends an unexpected intimacy to the most mundane tasks that I find a little awkward, but in a good way. My new husband’s personality, when I met him just a few years ago, was just as surprising when it began to unfold to me: when we finally got over our initial shy reserve—it only took two semesters—to reveal a young-old man with twisted-humor that rivals my own, and also with an exquisite sense of honesty and justice and truth that never ceases to surprise me; he makes me feel humble, he makes me want to be a better person, if I may steal a line from that Jack Nicholson movie.

I feel lucky that I get to share his name; I don’t feel I am giving anything up. I don’t feel I am losing any part of my identity or my sense of self. I simply feel lucky. I’m a very, very lucky person. And even though I felt some small twinge of strangeness and loss when I signed my last name away for the price of a new driver’s license, I still feel I’ve got the better bargain.

So, what is in a name? I cannot really answer that question, no more than Shakespeare could, I suppose. He managed to describe quite nicely that uncomfortable balance where significance and reality rest in the minds and hearts of the people who consider such things. We make our own significance.

So my new name, even though it is new, will soon become comfortable to me, as homey and as easy as my first name, and while my new name does not necessarily re-define who I am, I believe it does make a statement about what I value, about who I trust, and, especially: about who I love.