The Dreaded Name Change

There are probably very few men on the planet who can understand the torture of deciding what to do with your name once married. For many women this is a simple issue, one that does not even merit a second thought. For other women, like myself, it is an identity thing that required reflection and careful choosing. Lucky for me, I come from a multi-divorced family so very few people I associate with have my last name at all. Changing my name to reflect oneness with my new husband was an easy choice despite the fact it is better suited for a boy and not all attractive for a girl...Hacker. It does lend itself to a good fantasy football team name though, so I will focus on the positive.

Making the choice was the easy part and I even get to decide how to hyphenate because I can do whatever I want in the age of the "Equality of Names Act 2007," thank you California. This actually hugely worked to my benefit as I did not have to become a Witt Hacker and could do it the other way around. Now begins the arduous process of contacting every credit card company, every social networking site, changing the cell phone voicemail, the home voicemail, the email, the list goes on and on and on. Now all of these freaking things have different rules as to how you can change your name. For some you must wait until you have a photo ID, for others show your marriage certificate and for others still just write a letter. Believe it or not, the ones that I still have yet to change are the ones that require I write a letter. What is this, the prairie days? All the things keeping us connected and saving us time make any small change to your life a monumental undertaking.

In thinking ahead I decided to do everything at once. We were planning on moving, so I would do my big name change in conjunction with my, "guess what we moved announcement." Instead of making things simple, this apparently sends up multiple red flags of massive identity theft threats. Next thing you know all my alerts are letting me know someone must be stealing my name as we speak, not only the new one but the old one too. Sorting through that stack of mail took eons. Needless to say I think I am pretty close to fully transitioning to the Hacker-Witt of it all and I do think it was worth it.