Really, REALLY unfortunate wedding announcements
Or, When NOT to Hyphenate Your Name. What’s my favorite? Best Lay? Wang Holder? Weener Whipple? Peters Rising? No, I can’t choose. Go see them all for yourself.
Speaking of names, I am inevitably going to have to become Mrs Uncle Badger or they won’t let me stay across the pond or get access to the wonderful National Health Service. I am, of course, proud and delighted to wear a family name associated with thousands of years of smelly, lice-ridden, bad tempered mustelids who live down holes and eat worms, but this does present me with a problem.
See, in the UK, a woman typically exchanges her husband’s last name for her own, keeping her same old given first and middle name. In the US, she takes his last name, drops her middle name and her own last name shifts over and becomes her new middle name. So I have a choice here.
To complicate matters, I have TWO middle names, and they’re corkers. My mama approached baby names and dog names in a similar spirit of mad hijinks and good clean fun. If I’d been born ten years later, in her commune days, I’m convinced I would have ended up Lemondrop Polythene Snickerdoodle Weasel. As it is, I got a melange of cornpone polysyllabic family names, something very like Stoaty Terwilliger Rothschild Weasel.
So do I follow the Brit tradition — Stoaty Terwilliger Rothschild Badger — and continue to sound like something that wandered boozily out of a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon to piss down your leg? Or do I go with the alternate, Stoaty Weasel Badger, and sound all classy and shit, like some kind of a fucking duchess already? (Don’t even suggest hyphenating the two. Stoaty don’t play that. I think that’s getting married with your fingers crossed behind your back).
I know y’all are going to be disappointed in me, but I’m leaning toward “duchess.” I’ve enjoyed my stupid name very much, but enough’s enough. I think I’ll play grownup for a while. I’m sick of being unable to fill out forms (try fitting “Terwilliger Rothschild” in the little space they leave for middle names) and having to spell it out for people.
But, man, would I ever love to be Crystal Butts McCracken.
Posted: September 20th, 2007 under britain, family, moving, personal.
Comments: 26
Comments
Comment from winston
Time: September 20, 2007, 9:02 am
Try thumbing through some Dicken’s novels for inspiration. He came up with some really wonderful names somehow. Liquor I suspect. And talk about authentically British!
Comment from porknbean
Time: September 20, 2007, 9:33 am
I thought the US tradition was to keep your first and middle name and take your husband’s last name? I never heard of moving your last name to middle, then husband’s name – maybe that is an east coast blue-blood thing?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 20, 2007, 9:39 am
I’m from the South originally. But…thinking about it…yeah, all the women in my family took their old last name for their middle name and dropped their old middle name.
Maybe it’s a Southern thing. We’re real fussy about family relationships, mostly so we don’t accidentally interbreed more than we intended.
Comment from porknbean
Time: September 20, 2007, 9:57 am
Ahh…I forgot you were from the south. Could quite possibly be a southern thing.
Comment from Gnus
Time: September 20, 2007, 10:10 am
As usual, I will be of absolutely no help, being suthren and all. No big surprise there, eh?
Being stuck with an onerous middle name, and being a Junior to boot (Cornpone Mushmouth Mumble, Jr. – a mouthful), I kinda sorta feel your pain, Sweasel.
Comment from Lokki
Time: September 20, 2007, 10:39 am
I once had a true love who broke up with me on this very issue…. she had professional aspirations (and rightly so) and understood that her ‘professional name ‘would have to be carried. Our names, combined were a disaster – not so much when written but definitely when spoken.
While this has been cleverly disguised to protect my secret identity as Clark Kent, it would have been close to
Maurice Lotta-Milk
She dumped me.
Comment from armybrat
Time: September 20, 2007, 10:40 am
the other girls in my family did the name maiden name hubby’s name thing. Me…had to be different-name maiden yphen hubby’s name. That’s the kind of stupid shit you do when you get married at 21. 23 years later, everytime I have to sign my legal name it’s a pain in the ass to write out 16 letters. Just do what most of my professional collegues do (because it’s a pain in the ass to change names on licenses) keep your name and introduce yourself as the badger’s wife.
Comment from porknbean
Time: September 20, 2007, 10:46 am
I kept my middle name and took my husband’s last name. Was happy to shed my 10 letter maiden name – mostly because my maiden family are a constant source of irritation.
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 20, 2007, 12:03 pm
I’ll have you know, my pet lice are very friendly. They frequently sing me to sleep.
Comment from porknbean
Time: September 20, 2007, 12:33 pm
Okay Badger, I went looking for a pic of ‘Milquetoast the cockroach’ (remember him whispering subliminals in Opus’ ear as he slept?) for a sassy comeback to your singing lice.
I swear that on the dogpile page of milquetoast cockroaches, Kucinich’s website popped up. Now it is not there. Hmmmm……
Comment from mesablue
Time: September 20, 2007, 2:13 pm
Just wait a couple of years after you are married and have your name legally changed to @.
I know, big help.
Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: September 20, 2007, 2:59 pm
So far I’ve come as close to the big M as I’ve come to the zone of exclusion around the Chernobyl NPP. Don’t get me wrong though – I’d really love to do it one day. If I can find the right person (to tell me where the deadly pockets of radiation are).
Comment from Princess Bernie
Time: September 20, 2007, 4:34 pm
Honor the Badger and take his name outright. Cleave to your furry guy. The two shall become one – of what we aren’t quite sure. What do you get when you cross a badger and a weasel?
Really. Not a joke. Anybody? Beuhler?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 20, 2007, 4:36 pm
I don’t know, but you wouldn’t BELIEVE how bad it smells.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 20, 2007, 5:12 pm
Incidentally, I hope you guys followed the link. I was rolling. I didn’t make up any of those names in the picture.
I think Hardy – Harr is my favorite.
Comment from nbpundit
Time: September 20, 2007, 5:41 pm
S’once again, SWeasel gains 15 nanos of infamy fame.
Comment from Mike C.
Time: September 20, 2007, 5:47 pm
Hmm. I think Mrs. Mike C. (AKA TGoP at GCP) did the southern thing and moved her family name left and dropped the middle one. her middle name was also a family name and even wierder than her real one.
I say I think this is true. We’ve only been married almost 36 years, so I’m not sure.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 20, 2007, 6:18 pm
Yes, I was suprised to hear that wasn’t universal. I guess when your own family does something, you assume everyone does.
My grandmother didn’t get any name at all on her birth certificate. She took this cue to change her name any time she wished, usually to whatever was most fashionable at the time. I know she was Maude for a while.
Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: September 20, 2007, 6:31 pm
I do think it’s a southern thing to move the maiden name to the middle name, it’s what my mom did. But then again, she was usually called by first-middle anyway.
I’d go w/ whichever I liked the sound of better.
Comment from lizardbrain
Time: September 20, 2007, 7:03 pm
My mom also dropped her middle name and moved her maiden name over. It’s gotta be a Southern thing. She always claimed she was a Southern Polack, because she was from the South Bronx.
Comment from armybrat
Time: September 20, 2007, 8:20 pm
my folks are yankees and my mama did the maiden name as middle name thing after they got married. Next year is their 50th, so something worked for them.
Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: September 20, 2007, 11:06 pm
I’m Southern, and it’s never even occurred to me to take my last name as my new middle name. My mom certainly didn’t.
As for me, I do like my middle name (it comes from my grandmother) and don’t like my last name, which doesn’t sound good with my first name. Unfortunately, the boy’s last name doesn’t sound great either, and it’s French. Quelle horreur! His family has anglicized the pronunciation, and may have been in Texas longer than my family, so that’s something, I guess.
I should probably append some sort of in-the-event-that-we-get-married disclaimer to the above remarks, but somehow, I don’t feel it’s necessary.
Comment from Nina
Time: September 20, 2007, 11:16 pm
The good thing about going to England is that they name babies just about anything, so whatever you choose you will fit right in.
So relax, and put as many names on your chequebook as will fit.
Comment from Pupster
Time: September 21, 2007, 9:00 am
Poore-Sapp and Crap-Beer are my favorites.
Where my dad grew up in Indiana, there was a HUGE amount of folks named Beer, I always thought it was the greatest last name: “Stoaty Weasel Badger Beer” is quite lyrical.
Comment from Gremlin
Time: September 21, 2007, 2:42 pm
lol…lmao…rotflmao…what?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 21, 2007, 2:45 pm
Woohoo! Fresh meat! I mean, ummm…hi!
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