Everyone’s asking me why I changed my last name. I understand why people are curious, I mean after 10 + years to make this kind of change seems kind of strange. When people ask me the question, I am always momentarily perplexed. To me, the question was not “why”, but rather “why did I wait so long?” I think that one of the reasons is that I’m not the same person that I was one month ago. And, truth be told, I’m not the same person as I was two weeks ago either. Change has become a more visible and positive presence in my life.
We change our skin and blood completely every seven years. We are not the same people internally either. When my wife and I started dating, many people warned her about me because in the past, I had not shown much kindness to the women I dated. What most people didn’t realize was that time had passed. I had gone away to college and realized some important things in the process. I had changed in ways that nobody else understood because they were looking at the John that was, the sixteen year old ID John, not the current and (slightly) more mature John. In some Native North American cultures, people were given several names during the course of their lives. These names reflected who that person was during that period of time. You may be called Stays At Home because you don’t like to be separated from your mother in your youth. In your adulthood, you may take the name Strong Deer signify your hunting prowess. I don’t know how many names are allowed during a lifetime, it doesn’t really matter. It just goes to show the understanding that these people had about evolving personalities and how we can be different people at different times of our lives.
I believe that we are all different people depending on the situation. My wife goes by several names. They all reflect different aspects of her personality: Mother, Crazy Woman, Lover just to name just a few. She is all of these people, frequently several at a time. My nickname, Bont, was originally conceived as a mockery of my pronunciation. Later it was used as a derogatory term when I was being a self-centered jerk. It is still used in that manner today when that aspect of my personality resurfaces. Most of the time though, I’m just John. A plain name that does little to describe the person that I have become and the journey that has been taken.
That brings me to the Japanese aspect of all of this: History. I got to thinking about family names and how happy I was that Gretchen took my name when we got married, because otherwise the Beaumont name would disappear. By doing that, I was asking Gretchen to give up her claim to her family history and in essence, leave behind who she was. Ten years ago, this seemed reasonable. Today, it sounds like a lot to ask of anyone. I wanted to take Gretchen’s family name because of my love for her family as well as my own. I wanted to recognize the fact that I am not just a Beaumont anymore; I am a new person with two wonderful families that love me and that I love back. My respect for the Hemmer family is boundless, and my only regret is that I didn’t realize sooner how much it meant to me to be a part of the family in name as well as by marriage. The kids don’t have the new name. They can choose to do that later if they want, and I hope that they do. I hope that they change their name to add their spouses, and that their children do the same. I would love to think that three generations from now you will be able to meet one of our descendants and understand their family history just by knowing their name. It sure will make filling in the little dots on the SATs hard though, won’t it?
Ten years is a long time. Couple that with dating and you almost get 14 years of being with only one person. When does a marriage become stale? How does it happen? People change, they grow apart, they cease communicating or fighting, they grow complacent. For us, changing our names is an affirmation of who we are as a couple. It is a statement of fact that we are two halves made into something never seen before, something magical. The day I changed my name with the Social Security Administration was as exciting as the day that I got married because I was new again. Our relationship was new again. I was not the same person that I had been, and not just because of the normal changes of time, but through choice. This, more than anything else, is why I changed my name.
