GOD BLESS SINGLE WOMEN. And those married women who chose to keep their given surnames.
Recently, I caught up with a former colleague on LinkedIn, whom I have not seen since the early 1990s. The opportunity to connect would have been lost if not for a former, mutual business associate because both of us legally changed our names when we married.
We all lose touch with folks we worked with early in our careers, but re-connecting is so much easier when women remain unmarried. Let’s face it, many of us leave our single selves behind when we marry, including the name we were given by our birth, or adoptive parents.
Because I had never intended to marry, I hadn’t given this much thought to what I might do. I had always been Valerie Poulin. I didn’t think that that would change. However, my husband-to-be did not agree.
Although I preferred to keep my maiden name (even the term “maiden name” seems outlandishly outdated), I lost this battle early in our relationship, and I learned not to regret it because I saw it as a new beginning. That, and a few years later, while doing our family tree, I learned that “Poulin” is likely not a “real” family name anyway. That is, it’s not a blood family name, so keeping it mattered less.
Then again, I had an ace up my sleeve: I could use my given name “Poulin” in my writing. Indeed, it has proven to be handy to have a pseudonym—on Twitter, on Facebook, on FourSquare—that I can use with ease.
At times, I’ve resorted, too, to using my given surname in parenthesis, like they did (still do?) in wedding announcements in newspapers (nee Poulin), only I switched it to the middle, creating a third nom du plume: Valerie (Poulin) Bean.
So, now I have three names: Valerie Bean, Valerie Poulin, and Valerie (Poulin) Bean. I like the versatility.