The Long Road to Hyphenation
A close up of an open book, the middle pages curled and tucked into the spine, forming a heart.
By. Traci Musick
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—too?”
--Emily Dickinson
Nine years…
It’s been nine years that my best friend and I have lived together in love and harmony. Nine years spent living in friendship, in work, tending to family, traveling on occasion, and living life on our terms—not anyone else’s. Nine years that we also knew would inevitably lead to marriage. When we both hit age fifty, we knew the time had arrived. It was time to “legalize” our love for one another. Even though we’ve felt married in heart for almost a decade, the legitimacy of being an “us” in the eyes of the law necessitated a judge’s stamp of approval.
One evening leading up to the day of our scheduled ceremony, my husband-to-be looked at me and asked: “So, what about your name?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you changing your name to mine? Or are you keeping your maiden name?” He looked at me with inquiring eyes and a wry smirk.
It was an obvious question. One that most couples don’t spend much time discussing. But our situation was different. I was skirting the surname issue. Biding time. I loved my maiden name. But I also didn’t want to offend the man I loved with all my being by rejecting his family name.
What’s a female to do?
It had taken me years struggling through three failed marriage attempts and name changes to finally get my maiden name back.
It felt like being lost and then found. For nine years, I had reveled in the return to myself. It was the self I had been assigned when I entered the world. Granted, it was my father’s surname—patriarchy at its core. And now, I faced a new dilemma. At this mid-point in my life, did I want to lose myself again? To disappear, be erased with the swipe of a pen what had been printed on me from the beginning? Is this self not mine?
As a female facing the sanctity of marriage, I wonder why women’s identities suddenly get subverted with a name change? Why are we still treated like nobodies who then only become somebodies once we don the cloak of a man’s last name. Why are we still expected to change? Why in the year 2020 do the vast majority of heterosexual women so willingly drop their given names for that of a man’s? These questions make me wonder about the journey of the self. If poet Gerard Manley Hopkins is correct in his declaration that “What I do is me: for that I came,” then why must women change the self that God thumbprints upon us at birth? The answer lies along a thorny path that leads me to the land of hyphenation.
* * *
“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
The teacher stood before me shining her sunshine grin seeming to feign interest in a six-year-old’s response. How many times do teachers and adults in general ask this of small children?
“I want to be a wife and mommy,” I replied with innocent sincerity as I thought about my favorite baby doll, Drowsy, lying on my bed waiting for my return from school. As a doll Mom, I always gave her a farewell kiss “goodbye” each morning before I exited the house to make, what seemed in my kidlike eyes, the long journey down the street to board the school bus.
The time was early 1970s and there seemed to be no push for this small girl to dream of any more than this response given to my teacher: wife and mom.
In elementary school, I also vaguely remember a game that kids played where they listed on paper three potential mates, three numbers, three locations, and other future life paths. I can’t remember it fully except with the roll of a die, crossing out listed options eventually led to results of whom a person would marry, how many kids he/she would have, and where a person would live, etc. The reason this game stands out to me is because I recall writing my “new” married name over-and-over based on the game’s results: Mrs. Sam Baker, Mrs. Jim Smith, Mrs. Billy Tate, and so on. Never once did it occur to me that I didn’t have to take a man’s last name.
Why?
Because in the 1970s, I never once heard of any woman marrying and keeping her maiden name. At least, I never heard of this happening in my rural, foothills of Appalachia area. I knew that once I grew up and married, my name would change. It had to change. This was the inevitable path. There was no other choice. Or, was there?
Today, I know I have options. I can choose to change my last name to my husband’s, I can keep my maiden name, or my husband and I can create our own name. What possibilities! Why didn’t I realize this when I first started meandering down the marital path back in the 1990s?
“Are you changing your name to mine? Or, are you keeping your maiden name?”
With this question hanging like a comment bubble above my future-husband’s head, I wondered what should I choose?
I also wondered: what do most heterosexual women do in 2020?
With that question in mind, I kicked into Nance Drew mode. Time to do a little investigating. Firing up the laptop and honing in on Google, my research on this topic began. I gotta be honest. What I found shocked me even in 2020!
Surprisingly, 90% of women still change their last names to that of their husband’s. That many women? But, why? We no longer live in the land of dowry where women are traded along with money, land, cows, or goats. So, why do we continue with the premise that “I am no longer myself but now belong to a man; therefore, I must take his name”? The old 9th century “doctrine of coverture” no longer rules the day. This notion was once English common law; wherein, women adopted their husband’s surname at marriage. Why did women do this? The honest answer hurts. It wounds my womanly heart. During this time period, women lacked an independent legal identity apart from their family and/or spouse. A female either belonged to her father, or she married and then became property of her husband. It was a sort of “identity deletion.” In short, women never had their own identities.
Did I want that?
Did I want to contribute again to my own “identity deletion”?
Who am I anyway?
Poet Emily Dickenson’s words sprang to mind:
“I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you—Nobody—too?”
Wow. Then there are plenty of us “nobodies” running around this world.
Did I want that again?? I had already changed my maiden name to “Davis” when I married in my 20s. Post-divorce and in the next marriage, I changed to “Potter.” Post another divorce, I finally returned to my maiden name. I felt like MYSELF again. I had RETURNED to the ME that is I.
The long, thorny road through name changes was a jungle-mass of catastrophe on so many levels. Did I want to return to that arduous hike again? Nine years I had hiked my hike on my terms, in my own way, with my own identity. Did that suddenly have to stop? Did my journey have to change direction?
A close up of two hands clasped in green foliage. The hand on top wears a diamond engagement band.
“How dreary—to be—Somebody!”
In research, I discovered that women who choose not to change their names are seen by society as more “masculine” while their husbands are viewed more “feminine.” Also, keeping one’s maiden name is deemed “deviant behavior.” Really? Even in 2020, it’s “deviant” to not take on another person’s name? To lose one’s identity?
Even more shocking in my research, I learned most people believe it should be a legal requirement that women should change their name upon marriage. A legal requirement? It’s no wonder that women lag behind their male counterparts in terms of salaries, leadership roles, economics, professions, opportunities, status, and even in confidence. If we don’t see the merit and value in our own selves, then it’s no wonder the world doesn’t either.
But then, another issue arises during the natural course of relationships: children. I understand the complication of bringing innocent others into a union. Having children confuses the last name debate. Rarely do newborns receive their mother’s last name. But, from where I stand at age fifty, I no longer have to worry about bringing children into the world.
But I still wonder…
Does the last name set up a failed system for my gender?
Men, I reckon, feel a responsibility to propagate the family name. To spread it around like pollen. If women refuse to change their names, does it erase the family lineage? Can a man handle a woman’s name-change refusal?
Alas, women are stuck in the position of deciding between the self and family. As we travel the difficult path through the birth canal to enter this world, we are thumb-printed with our identity. It is forged upon the hospital wristband as we wail and cry out that we have arrived. From the pronouncement of one’s birth, the self that is ours is suddenly lost upon the altar of “I do.” So the journeying to the self that is signed in our blood and swarms in our flesh is erased with the signing of a marriage certificate. What was planned and known before our birth, for that we came.
And then we get subverted. While men remain the same.
After numerous name changes, I wonder about the psychological costs of losing one’s personal identity. From our entrance into the world, we develop an innate connection to our given name. It forges the self. Seals the envelope and delivers us onto our paths. Our romantic notions, our societal norms, our fear of scrutiny from others, our traditions leave a woman sacrificing the only self she knows for that of another. This expectation sits rooted in traditional, patriarchal, marital swamps. Despite advancements in gender equality and women’s rights, the expectation of name-changing is still at its core a morass of accepted sexism.
“Are you changing your name to mine? Or, are you keeping your maiden name?”
His question forces me to mentally rewind the thorny path of years that led me to him. Right to this moment. With this ever-important question hanging on the cusp of our legal union. It is humbling and hard as flint to feel caught in the middle of such a choice.
Who am I?
Am I nobody?
Why must I—as a female—be named and owned by another? By changing our names, we perpetuate and reinforce patriarchy. We say that one person in the collective whole of the couple is more valued than the other. Shouldn’t a union—a joining of two individual forces out of love and respect—represent more? Like any business venture, shouldn’t both parties be represented by such a merger?
So, back to that evening before my marriage ceremony, I sat on the couch and looked at the sweet face across from me that I would soon call my legal “husband.” With his shining blue eyes and dimply-smile, my heart melted as it often does when I stare at him for any length of time. I considered the long, arduous road I had taken to get to this moment. The challenges, the hardships, the sweat, and the tears shed along my 50-year journey to return to the self that is I.
Here, with him, I knew I was home.
I had arrived to the home that is me…
And we.
No other answer could exist. No other option available.
This climb from childhood to home was now fulfilled.
Now, I am complete.
I looked at his radiating grin and knew that he intentionally wanted to make me squirm. He was testing and teasing me all at once. And like magic, author Ray Bradbury came to mind. His words floated into the air like its own comment bubble: “What you do is thee. For that I gave you birth. Be that. So be the only you that’s truly you on Earth…What we do is us…For that we came.”
With full confidence I hadn’t felt in all my years, I looked at my love and replied, “I choose to empower us.”
For it is the hyphen that represents this journey, the long road we both took to arrive. Through the hyphen, we are both empowered. We are both represented. We are united. Forming one whole. There is no loss of one in the us that is us.
For that, we, indeed, did come.
With Un-Ending Love and Devotion,
Traci L. Musick-Shaffer
Close up of Traci, smiling wide with teeth showing. She is wearing a white, lacy, tank top with her hands on her hip. Her hair is auburn, and there is a backyard with grass and trees in the background.
Traci L. Musick-Shaffer is a twenty-seven year teaching veteran who lives and works in the tristate area of Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. She earned a BA from Marshall University in Huntington, W.V., and a MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Her writing has appeared in Fourth and Sycamore, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Mock Turtle Zine, and Turnpike Magazine. She is featured in recent editions of Rubbertop Review, The Finger Literary Journal, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Currently, she teaches in southern Ohio where she prefers her log cabin country living with her husband, David, and border collie, Holly.