Last Names, Again

So I've decided to go with the feminism-be-damned option and take Rick's name.

Actually, I think I'm going to go with the logic-be-damned option and just add Rick's name onto mine, but shove my last names over to be middle names so I can both keep my names and end up with just one last name. Because how often do you really write your full full name these days? And apparently having three middle names is totally legal in Connecticut.

Which leads me to what seems to be a much trickier question: What do I do with my byline?

The personal life name-change was a pretty easy decision, especially once I realized there's a way to take his name without actually losing any of mine. It might have been harder if I had just one name originally, but this whole double-naming thing reaches its logical conclusion in one generation. And I want to have the same last name as my (imaginary future) children.

But work is trickier. I always figured I'd change my name privately and keep my maiden names for work. Aside from being far simpler not to change anything, I figured it would give me a nice cushion of anonymity once the name that appears in the paper is not my legal name. (Not that anyone but journalists and their moms actually notice bylines.)

The more I think about it, though, I start to think that's self-defeating.

If name-changing is about convenience, then it would certainly be more useful for work to have one easily spellable and recognizable name. This occurs to me every time I try to leave a message for someone and end up spelling my name four times, or every time our computer system malfunctions and I have to call our company's IT helpdesk in India (my outsourced colleagues may speak perfectly fine English, but my guess is they don't deal with a lot of people named Levin). One name, and a common one at that, would just be way easier.

Of course, I do kind of like how my byline looks. And it is the name I've used as I started my career, however measly it is. And somehow, bringing your name change into the professional world plants you firmly on one side of the name-changing debate, as if every time you have to explain to a colleague or source or prospective employer why you had a different name a couple years ago, you're also saying "and I'm one of those women who doesn't keep her name." Which I suppose in my own way I fear is not the sort of woman I tend to think I am.

But then there's the issue of identity. Can you reconcile having two different names for two different circumstances? How do you get used to a new name if most of the time you still use the old one? I'm not sure how much having a particular name drives your identity, but part of me thinks that only taking his name in my personal life, when the only time I really have to use it is to make a dinner reservation, is kind of a cop out. And doesn't having a separate name for work and home reinforce a separation, even incompatibility, between the two?

I suppose in some ways this comes back to a question raised in the great Charlin-TPerl debates of elsewhere on the blog. Perl wondered whether a woman who kept her name would correct someone who introduced her as if she'd taken her husband's name, and asked whether doing so was important or not. The way you answer that question seems to depend in part on how important you see your name to your identity, and how significant it is if someone uses the wrong name.

I'm not sure how I'd answer that. Though since I'm rarely assertive enough to correct people when they mispronounce my one and only first name, I guess I probably wouldn't bother with the last name. But that hardly answers the question.

So, any suggestions?