What's in a Name

 

When Rick and I registered to be married, we had to choose our name. We could each keep our own names, select mine or his, be Adams-Nelson or Nelson Adams.

Known professionally for decades with our own names and not wanting to go to the work to change them on passports and other documents, we said we'd continue as we were.

"And your children?" the clerk asked.

We looked at each other. The chance of having children in our 70s was remote. Still the box had to be ticked. Thus our dog is Sherlock Adams-Nelson on his adoption papers from the animal rescue center.

I'd been taught by my WASP mother to be ashamed of my foreign maiden name Boudreau. She was proud of the names in her family: Sargent, Stockbridge, Young and Lane. The family went back to 1636 and John Sargent had fought in the American Revolution. Any names with ethnic origins, French, Italian, Irish were not to be desired.

In the 1940s when she married she selected to use a double barrelled name Sargent-Boudreau, although there was no clerk insisting on the selection at the time.

When I divorced my first husband I kept my married name. It matched my daughter's and Donna-Lane Nelson was nicely alliterative.

I wish my mother had lived long enough to learn that Boudreau belonged to General Michel Boudreau, who settled in Nova Scotia in 1640 and was a respected part of local history. 

His  fertility helped populate the region and there's even a Boudreauville, 

Living in Geneva and the South of France, I could return to the French name Boudreau. Legally, in France a woman keeps her maiden name while using her husband's name which is why from time to time, finding a document requires me to give it. 

I could eliminate the Nelson entirely, because the Anglo connection sets me aside, a complete 360° in attitude from my childhood environment.

I won't change it. I still like the alliteration and I don't want to face the paperwork. 

My name does not change who I am. I will be no taller, no smarter, no younger. I will not write better and my house will be no cleaner.