I Skipped the Name Change Game

I Skipped the Name Change Game

“What is your married name?” a woman asked shortly after I acquired a husband.

“Sondra Simmons,” I replied. She looked quizzically at me for a moment, then said, “Oh, I see. You didn’t change it.”

I was 40 at the time. “This name has served me well all my life,” I said.

She nodded. “And, not saying this will happen to you, I hope it doesn’t, but if you get divorced you don’t have to go through the hassle of changing it back.”

I remembered the conversation after reading Alice Brooks’ account of reclaiming her name. It wasn’t like I was making a statement by “keeping” my name; I just couldn’t think of a reason to go through the hassle of changing it.

Right after the ceremony, the judge’s clerk began explaining that I’d have to take a copy of this over here and another one over there and they had to be certified copies which could only be obtained in such-and-such an office after some date at the cost of… “I’m not changing my name,” I said. Then I turned to my brand-new husband and asked, “Do you care?”

Somehow we had gone through our entire courtship and wedding without giving that a thought. If anybody was making a statement at that moment it was Ed, who wanted the clerk to know that I was not his chattel.

Other people did seem to care. I explained to my father over and over again that the name he and Mom had given me as a newborn was still the name of the graying married lady I’d morphed into. He mailed letters to Mrs. Sondra S. Marinelli (who?) and I resisted the urge to return them marked Addressee Unknown. Occasionally he sent a check.

“I appreciate it, but I can’t do anything with it,” I’d say.

“Don’t you have any ID that says Sondra Marinelli?” he’d ask.

“No, Pop,” I’d say, and tell him again: “That’s not my name.”

I’ve been divorced almost four months now. The other day I got a note from one of my old neighbors addressed to Mrs. Sondra Marinelli. I just sighed.

Alice has made it official and may never be called by that other name again. After what she described in getting to that point, I could relate to her grinning for the driver’s license camera. I had a similar moment the other day. Just a small thing, a perky voice on the phone asking a familiar question for the first time since my divorce: “Are you single or married, Sondra?”

“Single,” I said, probably a bit more emphatically than necessary.