What's In a Name?

This has nothing really to do with planning, although I will share a picture I took the other night when my Eden swatches FINALLY came in from Macy's:

The bridesmaid dress color DOES go with clover!

But this post is mostly inspired by a common theme amongst the wedding blogs lately--changing one's name after the wedding. Now, this can be a semi-controversial topic, and I'd love Ellie to weigh in publicly, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm not changing my name. Not because Ellie's last name is longer than my already long-enough last name, or because I would be a lot less anonymous in this ever-increasing world of ID theft and whatnot (seriously, just try to Google my first-middle-name combo without location qualifiers; I doubt you would find ME for quite a few result pages--a a matter of fact, another Jessica Lee Robinson was born on the same day, in the same hospital, within the same hour!!). It's because I never wanted to. I always thought it was archaic that a woman automatically takes her husband's last name--it's a tradition steeped in misogyny and a cultural idea that women were not much more than property to be handed from a father to a husband (the whole "giving the bride away thing").

Then, in 2007, my brother passed away and I re-confirmed my desire to keep my last name. In many ways, I'm the last of my line. I have a cousin who was adopted by our grandparents, making him of the same line AND having the same last name, but we are distant and the gods only know if he will ever have children. I know there are some 2nd? once-removed? cousins from my grandfather's brother, but I think I have met them exactly once in my life--as far as I know, we're not the most "clannish" bunch. Anyway, by changing my last name, my father & un-married uncle would be the last of the AWR line. I feel like my original decision had been, in a way, reinforced.

I'm not from one of those families where everyone is super close. Like I've described above, I have only met my father's extended family once, maybe twice in my life. Our families were never very big, and stubbornness, alcohol and general dislike of other humans keeps us from really reaching out to others. Sometimes I feel that's a good thing, sometimes not, but it's how things are. None of this means I don't have some sense of family though, so there is something more to keeping my last name than just selfishness or an overly feminist ideal. It's many things, building upon each other, making up who I am. Sure, "a rose by any other name" and all, buy why fix it if it ain't broke?