Here’s a dilemna most men never have. What to call themselves.

I had my birth name/maiden name for roughly 24 years. Then I took my first husband’s name. When we divorced and I took my old name back as fast as I could.

Then I got married again and took my new husband’s name. Then we got separated. But the timing was odd. I was running for a seat on the local town council and had built up lots of name recognition with my married name. I’d been using it for six years at that point. By the time the divorce was final, I was elected and I decided to keep my married name.

But there was another reason. My two sons from my first marriage have their father’s last name. A name I never really shared with them. And their father was a deadbeat dad, never around. They are stuck with a name they must feel very ambivalent about. I decided I didn’t want to create that same separation with my youngest son.

But now I’m in a dilemna. It doesn’t feel right to continue using the name and I don’t want to go back to my maiden name either. I feel very disconnected from it after all this time. I feel like a person without a country.

Should I just keep my name as is and avoid alot of hassle? It is my legal name, my professional name and the root of my online identity.

Sometimes I wonder how a modern woman like myself even ended up in this situation in the first place? I should have just kept my birth name and avoided all this hassle. But women must always make a difficult choice: retaining their maiden name identity means a lifelong moniker disconnect with the most beloved people in their lives, their children.

One alternative some women choose, taking a hyphenated name for themselves and then adopting it for the children as well, always seemed like a silly choice. Think of all that extra writing! The kids would have hated me for it.

For now, simply for the reason of avoiding all the work and headache a name change would entail, I’m going with the status quo. But I'm feeling increasingly uneasy about it. Something's gonna give eventually.

 A poem I came across as I sat thinking...

Maiden Name 

Marrying left your maiden name disused. Its five light sounds no longer mean your face, Your voice, and all your variants of grace;

For since you were so thankfully confused By law with someone else, you cannot be Semantically the same as that young beauty: It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one, Lying just where you left it, scattered through Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon - Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly Untruthful?

Try whispering it slowly. No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone, It means what we feel now about you then: How beautiful you were, and near, and young, So vivid, you might still be there among Those first few days, unfingermarked again.

So your old name shelters our faithfulness, Instead of losing shape and meaning less With your depreciating luggage laden. -- Philip Larkin