By any other name?

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
- SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet

My friend Angella writes a (fantastic!) marriage column at Work it, Mom! called Committed: Ties That Bond. Her latest post, entitled Would Your Husband Take Your Name? really caught my attention.

I decided to share My Story with her (and everyone who reads her column). She emailed me, saying: That is SUCH a cool story, Hannah! … I think that story will have me smiling the rest of the day.

I bet you are intrigued. You want to know more. Well, okay.

To be honest, I never thought I’d share this story on my blog. It took place so long ago, and often I forget that it even happened! Anyway, I’m sharing now.

~~~~~

I’ll cut to the chase, shall I?
Rob’s last name used to be Hannah. Yep, that’s right. The same as my FIRST name.

Rob & I were friends for a looong time before we started dating. People in our circle of friends used to tease us All. The. Time.
“What if Rob married Hannah?!”
“That would be SO funny!”
“She would be called Hannah Hannah!!”
Bwahahahahahahaha!

You get the picture.

[Apparently Rob's Dad was teased in a similar way during primary school, as there was a girl called Hannah in his class. What was "funny" in the 50's was still funny in the 90's].

While we were dating, we discussed the name thing a few times. But it never went very far. It wasn’t something we focused on. We were too much in love to worry about such trivial matters.

Once we got engaged, we realised it was time to discuss it properly. I told Rob I was absolutely willing to become “Hannah Hannah”. I loved him, I wanted to take his surname, I would graciously put up with any hassling.

However, Rob decided that HE would change his name.
I was a little surprised at first, but he wanted to do it. He wasn’t worried about not “carrying on the family name”. He has 2 brothers who can do that job.

There were a few options:

1. Change to my surname. He was happy to do that. I was happy for him to do that. My parents were happy for him to do that.

2. Change to his mother’s maiden name (his parents are divorced). However, his mother’s maiden name is not the “prettiest” name around, so he opted out of that one.

3. My Mum actually came up with the third option.
Why not take his middle name (Blair) as his surname?
It was given to him by his parents, so had significance, and it would work well as a last name.

So that’s what he ended up doing. He changed his name by deed poll before we got married.

I LOVE the fact that Rob was willing to change his name to mine. In fact, I love that he was willing to change his name, period! It shows just how much he loves me. He didn’t want me to live with a surname the same as my first, as he knew the confusion and embarrassment it could have caused me. Not to mention the constant explaining and telling-of-the-story.

Speaking of explaining, we had to do a lot of that at first; we had to let everybody know about the change. It took some time for our family & friends to get used to it. Rob was often mistakenly called by his old name, but surprisingly, I was never referred to as “Hannah Hannah”. People caught on quickly, and soon it was the new normal.

Now when we meet new people, they don’t need to know the whole back story. We just introduce ourselves, and that’s it. Simple! It can be funny sometimes, though. For example, we are often asked if we are related to “So-and-so Blair” and we can always reply with a confident “No”, LOL.

Sometimes the Name Change story comes up naturally in conversation, and we’ve found that people really enjoy hearing it.
I like to think that’s because of the whole “I would do anything for love” theme.

Well, that’s why I like it.