A Pastry By Any Other Name

Next in the lineup of domestic issues to be sorted out is the name thing—not the baby’s first name, which we more or less decided on within a day of getting engaged, but our various and sundry surnames. Dr. Fiancé is 100% adamant that his kids have the same last name as him—and that his last name not be changed. He’s less adamant—like maybe only 99%—that I should keep my last name. I, too, would like to share a last name with my children, though I’m seldom if ever 100% certain about anything, and though I’ve always imagined I’d keep my own last name when I got married, I never really imagined my children having a different last name than me.

I tried suggesting that Dr. Fiancé take my last name as his middle name and giving it to the kids as their middle name, too, and me taking Dr. Fiancé’s last name as my middle name so that we all have both surnames somewhere close at hand, but my Taurus of a fiancé was not inclined to change even his middle name.

And did I mention he’s morally opposed to hyphenation?

When we visited my aunt and uncle in North Carolina last month we found out that my cousin and her fiancé are jamming their surnames together—with no hyphen but with a capital letter in the middle, like an email address or URL with capital letters here and there for clarity’s sake. I was so glad my aunt told us this because I figure the more creative/unique/unusual solutions we hear about, the more normal hyphenation or middle-name-changing will start to seem.

One of my writer friends suggested we take the anagram route and came up with Strudel, which is a near anagram (minus a few letters) of our last names, and which, I have to say, totally rocks.

Dr. and Mrs. Strudel has a pretty nice ring to it, you have to admit, especially if you’re as fond of pastries as I am.