Voices
ing children together and envision a family that shares a last
name. This is not a judgment on
how families are “supposed to”
be, just the way we picture doing
things ourselves. Furthermore,
with all the challenges same-sex
couples face, sharing a last name
is a way that we feel we are more
legible as a couple and, one day,
as parents to our children.
While the decision to change
our names was easy, the decision of to what and why was not.
Neither of us wanted to fully take
the other’s name—it felt like a
clear slight to the family whose
name was getting dropped. This
is where things began to get
frustrating; none of my straight
friends who have taken their new
husbands’ names have faced accusations about denying connections to their families of origin.
The next option was hyphenating, and Ilana had many reservations. Besides the obvious objection that hyphenated names are
long and clunky (and “Rademacher” isn’t helping), our future
children’s names became the
main concern. Do we really want
our kids’ names to be SternRademacher? How will they learn
to spell it? They’re going to be
KATIE
RADEMACHER
HUFFINGTON
08.19.12
amazing at sports—does that fit
on a jersey? What if they decide
to get married one day? Most importantly, hyphenated kids sometimes drop one name for the sake
of brevity; will they go by the
name of the biological parent (presumably me)? Ultimately,
Sharing
the option to hya last name
phenate didn’t satisfy the main reason
is a way that
to change our names
we feel we are
in the first place: to
more legible
share a single last
as a couple,
name and be legible
and, one day,
to the world as our
as parents to
children’s parents.
our children.”
Rejecting the traditional options,
Ilana and I decided to take on
a new family name, using some
combination of our names—truly
representing the joining of our
families—to make our own. After rejecting countless combinations, I wondered if we couldn’t
consider our mothers’ pre-marriage names as well. The more we
thought about this option, the
more Ilana and I loved the idea
of identifying our family through
a connection to the women who
come before us, both of whom