Names

Today, I caught a quick blurb on the View where Rosie is talking about the trouble with kids when their parents have different last names.  It’s usually not a problem, but if you’re dealing with the emergency room, it can definately be an issue.  This got me thinking about the issue of names for Carrie and I, and eventually our kids.

One option is to change everyone’s name.  We could do a hyphenated thing, hape-meyer, or we could create our own new name, hapemeyer, which works because there are lots of German names involving something and meyer.   We’d then be able to continue each of our lines in some sense.  Plus, then we’d all have the same name, making it more obvious that we’re a family.

Putting this into practice, however, feels wierd.  For one, I’m very attached to my name.  It’s been my name for 28 years after all! I don’t know how women do it when they get married.  I mean, why should I have to change my name?  It’s a silly patriarchal concept that reinforces the concept of male ownership and male blood lines.  Yet each person contributes 50% of the genetic material, so no one has any more claim than anyone else.  And then, when there isn’t a father involved, it’s even more complicated.

I don’t want to change my name.  I don’t want to have to learn how to sign my name over again.  Carrie is also very attached to her name.  Their family line is quickly dying out, and she wants to keep it going.  The last thing I would do is ask her to change her name, removing her outside family identity.  This isn’t much of a problem, until kids come along.  Then, they need to have a last name that identifies them as part of the family, once the adoption comes through.   It seems easiest to hyphenate the name.  Then, it should be clear enough that if someone has the last name meyer or hape, they are probably related, right?  It may be a little confusing for the kids at first, but they’ll figure it out eventually.  Plus, if we end up with mail addressed to the hape-meyer’s, I won’t mind.  I just don’t want to have to learn to sign my name differently.

Some people may say we’re too independent.  That marriage is about compromise.  But I don’t think it’s a compromise for one person to change their name, and not the other.  I also don’t see it as being that important for both people to change their name if they don’t want to.  How much simpler would life be if we didn’t have to learn everyone’s new names all the time?  I hate that I can’t track down old friends because they’ve gotten married and I don’t know their last name!   It just seems to be a system that isn’t needed anymore.   I do admit that I’m not sure how to fix this so that families are easily identifiable, but we don’t have impossibly long last names. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

apartment dream

This morning I had a dream that I bet I can find information about in dream books, so I want to write down what I can remember.  It seems like most of my dreams aren’t easy to find information about, which is frustrating when trying to discover meaning.  Maybe this one is different.

I went into an apartment that was supposed to be empty.  I thought it was supposed to be ours.  As I walked through the apartment, which was relatively dark, I noticed a few items left behind that shouldn’t have been there.  I kept walking around, though I’m not sure what I was looking for.  This apartment was setup kinda wierd, because I started going through the house in a clockwise manner, and eventually came to the bedroom, which had these huge doors.  I’m not sure what you call them.  There were two doors, that you open so that now it’s a pretty wide open room if you wanted.  They took up half of the wall or so.  I end up in the living room area, though there must be more to the apartment yet.  I start asking if there’s anyone there, because there’s even more stuff in the living room/kitchen area, including a tv turned on.  I start to get nervous, and have the sense that I’m in the wrong apartment, or that I’m in it too early.  Maybe we had only agreed to take it, and it was still being shown?  I packup Carrie’s laptop, though I don’t know why it was there and plugged in, but I was sure it was her’s.  I shoved it in a bag that I now had with me, hoping no one would question the ownership.  Basically, I didn’t want to get in trouble for being somewhere I thought was mine, and having things that were mine in my bag.  In the end I was able to leave without trouble, though it made me nervous.

I’ll add to this once I can look in some books or something.