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Changing my married name as a South Indian bride is fraught with many complications - as this comedy of errors shows!
Changing my married name as a South Indian bride is fraught with many complications – as this comedy of errors shows!
“You didn’t change your name ?” “No I didn’t because… ” I have answered it so many times now in the last few months.
No I am not offended by the question since it is a norm for centuries and so people are curious when someone decides not to change their name. And then comes the second question.
“What would your name be if you had decided to change?” “Ermm..” …the conversation continues for 30 more minutes as I explain the various aspects of a South-Indian name.
So this post is to explain the answer for the above question.
Being a South Indian in the United States (I felt) that this name change has a lot of layers to it and gets complicated.
Here is why:
My last name is my dad’s first name. I don’t have a family name like Smith or Reddy or Shah. So if I do have to change my name, my new last name would be my husband’s first name.
In my husband’s case, his last name is his dad’s first name. So even if I change my name, we both have different last names anyway.
I am JV and the husband is RG
If I change I will be JR and he remains RG
Say I do want to change and do justice to my maiden name, I can be hyphenated with three first names
My first name, my dad’s first name- my husband’s first name: J V-R
And say the husband wants to be fair and take my last name and hyphenate it :
His first name, my dad’s first name-his dad’s first name: R V-G
Or say I take his last name so that we both have the same names I am either
My first name, my dad- his dad: J V-G
or
My first name, his dad – my dad: J G-V
And yet we have no last name!
Being in a country where you are mostly referred to by your last name, being married just confuses people more. Especially if I am assumed to have gone through the norm.
Since I am really not against (would have preferred) having the same last name I did think through it. If we did want the same last names, we could have
Since neither were ready to give up the names we grew up with (and since it was too complicated), we decided to make no changes to our names!
P.S. I did (kind of) bug R about the fact that nobody would ask/asked him about his name while I faced this question almost every other day.
What are you thoughts on name changes after marriage? Do you have an experience to share? Did you/did you not change your name? Please do share your stories here with me!
Published here earlier.
Image source: youtube
A free thinker, equalist who has never feared to voice out opinions. I believe that everyone deserves the same kind of respect irrespective of gender, identity, background, social or economic. And we need to evolve read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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