Flashback time: I'm 14-years-old. I'm doing a group project. One of the girls, let's call her Jane is taking down the group's names on the assignment sheet. It's time for my name and I notice that she has me down as Atiya Mitchell.
"Actually it's Irvin-Mitchell. Or Just Irvin if there's not enough space," I say.
"No," She said. "The right way to do it is to use your Dad's name. You're supposed to only have your father's name anyway."
Here we go. For reasons unknown, some people have a problem with hyphenation. Some people have a problem with women who don't want to want to chuck out the names they born with along with their Tinder accounts. Some people think the idea that a woman would want to pass her name on to her children is emasculating and blasphemous.
Disclaimer time: I totally get why people want to change their surnames. Sometimes the family you were born into didn't work out. Some surnames are awful and shouldn't be passed onto poor unsuspecting small humans. Some people just like their spouse's names and the tradition and good for them. I'll say it again, it's a valid choice. It's just not the only one.
When I do use one surname (either for the sake of time or space) I typically use my mother's name. It flows, it's first, and I lived with her growing up. When people like Jane express their disapproval after watching a few childbirth videos, I’ve concluded that after pregnancy and labor my mother more than earned getting a credit in my name.
Don’t get me wrong; standardized tests can sometimes be a pain. As well as the occasional airport not being convinced that I am a person that exists. But honestly, most of the discomfort I’ve ever felt for having a hyphenated name has boiled down to the fact that some people refuse to acknowledge that my name just because it doesn’t reflect certain traditions rooted in patriarchal values.
For the longest time, I had no idea that the "name-change" thing was a thing. My parents weren't married and most of the kids I knew (even with married parents) had hyphenated names like I did or simply had their mother's. When my mother married my stepfather her name stayed the same, I simply assumed that was the norm. Only when I read about the scandal Lucy Stone and the Suffragettes caused by opting out the name change in the 1800s in 6th grade did it click for me. Reading about the Lucy Stoners of the world I realized that I’d probably do the same. I couldn’t imagine my name ever being anything else. May I say I'm seriously not looking forward to dealing with other people's opinions on this when the time comes?
Feelings on this subject can vary from culture to culture, but from what I've noticed there are many people who agree with Jane. A family member once implied on Facebook that children with hyphenated names or simply their mother’s last names were the products of “Side Chicks”, thanks a lot. Others feel it’s unfair to fathers, even if those fathers have nothing to do with the children carrying their names. That wasn't the case for my family, but I’ve always wondered, outdated coverture laws aside, what is it exactly that hypothetically makes me more my father’s daughter than my mother’s? I hated Biology, but my understanding of the whole DNA business is that it’s a 50/50 divide.
And in response to people saying two surnames is too confusing for kids, I always enjoyed having two names. As a kid, I actually thought it was fun that I had two last names and everyone else had one. And in the years since my father’s death, it has become even more significant to me that I’m connected equally to my mother and my father. So sorry Janes in the world, yes some people do just have their father's last names, but that's not the only way to go.
