Reasons I Kept My Surname

Feb 1

Me: If your wife wants to keep her last name, would you have an issue with that?

Male Cadet: Hell yeah! We married.

Me: But how does that measure her love for you, if she does or doesn’t take your last name?

Actual conversations that I had with male Cadets last summer (we had many in our efforts to get to know each other). The answers varied. Some responses were really weird like, “If she doesn’t want to change her name, then we not getting married!”. Others were pleasing to hear like, “It’s her decision. If she wants to keep her last name then that’s fine.”.

You guys know by now that my current marriage is not my 1st marriage. If you didn’t, you do now. My first marriage (2012) I was 19 years young and knew almost nothing about myself; nothing compared to the awareness of self that I have today. When it came to the consideration of changing my last name, I remember feeling bad for wanting to hyphenate my name. Taking his last name felt like it was something that I had to do, it was tradition, but I just couldn’t let go of Murphy. I remember trying to communicate that the decision to wear both names did not mean I couldn’t be an equal partner in that marriage. At the end of those conversations, because they happened more than once, I remember hearing something along the lines of “as long as it’s hyphenated.”. Reflecting back, I think what if it wasn’t hyphenated, would it have been an issue? I’m certain that it would have been.

Maybe the deep love and connection I have to my surname is reflected in the short time it took me to drop the hyphenated name after the divorce. Going back to wearing only Murphy on my uniform felt like I was getting myself back; it was beyond the relief of divorce. Anyone that knows me, even before the Army, has called me by my last name. All of my life I had heard friends of my father call him by our surname as well. Murphy represents more than a family name. Although of Irish descent, it represents the struggle and survival of a Black southern family. And, the legacy the only daughter a father has, that must be continued. For me, it was more than a name.

I’ve explained these things to Jalen, my husband. I believe that he has developed a better understanding over the years. In the beginning, the conversations were sometimes hard because of traditions we were familiar with as well as seen our families follow, and how I wanted to break away from them. It was a complicated subject, but we talked about it. Discussing things as challenging as that, made it just a little easier to face the other issues we would encounter together. At the end of the day, the decision to keep or change my last name does not measure the love I have for my husband and marriage.