Frozen Nowhere

Names, Names, Everywhere Names

 

I have several names… but then again doesn’t everyone?

I have the names that I am known by online via email accounts or social networking connections such as Twitter and IM/chat programs. I have nicknames and pet names and titles…
I have my “Christian” name — you know, my given names — which happen to be Pamela (Pam).
I have my maiden name, which I was volun-told to change when I married (theEx didn’t think his family could “accept” that his wife might want to keep her own name after marriage, and his family was always his first and foremost concern in all decisions)… which is still on record with a lot of government organizations as “mine” but isn’t on my legal identifications.
And lastly, I have my married name… basically I gave up being Pam B and became Mrs Ex to appease his ego and his father’s christian ideals of what a good wife would be (and this was months and months of arguing over whether he would even marry me if I didn’t take his name, because I wanted to keep my OWN name after marriage). This is the name that is on MOST of my legal identification… with the exception of the identification that was issued prior to my marriage (IE, my birth certificate and social insurance card). It is the name that all my bank accounts are in, the name that my pay stubs come in, the name that is on my company email and company identifications, the name that is on my cheques, the name that my VISA is on…

 

And the name that identifies me as the mother of my children.

 

Oh, yes… the complication is added when it comes to having children– legally my children are REQUIRED to have their father’s surname. I mean, if I hadn’t taken his name they MIGHT have been allowed to have a hyphenated last name but societal rules state that the children are identified as belonging to their father’s family and so they have his last name.

So my taking back MY original name, the name of MY father, means that I am no longer identified as belonging to the same “FAMILY” as my children? It will be a forever of explaining to various schools and organizations WHY they have the last name “Ex” and I have my own last name, of the schools and other authorities giving precedence to their father because they are all identified as “FAMILY” whereas I am now the outsider in their lives, and the knowledge that when theEx remarries (because it is inevitable given his family that he will remarry and likely have a second family) his second wife will forever be assumed to be the mother of MY children…

So here are my feelings on this in the simplest terms possible (for me):

 

So, why has this come to the forefront TODAY, when I had stated that I was going to wait until I was divorced to change my name?

 

Well… a few weeks ago I kinda started to consider the idea of going on a small adventure, the preparation of which required me to get a PASSPORT. And while trying to figure out what documentation I needed to provide to the Canadian government in order to obtain a passport under my name, I was informed that ,despite the common perception, my married name was NOT a legal name change.

 

Nope. I “adopted” the name of my husband, but I didn’t LEGALLY change the name. That is, I never stopped being able to use my maiden name, I just adopted the custom of the society and started using my married name.

 

Meaning that I could, at any time, choose to use my MAIDEN name rather than my married name, without having to pay to have it changed back (of course, there WILL be costs associated with this, inevitably)… the nice fellow who answered all my passport application related questions told me that all I had to do was get my ID back in my maiden name, and then I would be able to get my passport in my “own” family name, because my maiden name WAS my name, despite my having been married and that I did not have to WAIT for divorce papers to ask the government to PLEASE give me back what I never really wanted to give up…

 

And so… I have a decision (or three) to make here:

 

Do I want to change my name back?

 

Do I want to wait until my divorce is finalized?

Do I want my passport? (cuz, seriously, I haven’t even officially been invited to the event that spurred this all on…)…

 

And really… how easy will all this be???

 

So… herein lies yet another adventure for me… (I think its best to blog this over time (: )