Let’s settle this with a coin flip…
At some point, every married couple has to answer the last name question. Should wives take their husbands’ last names? Should you hyphenate? Should you buck tradition entirely and have a husband take his wife’s last name? Maybe create an entirely new name? (Did any of you know that former Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, was born “Antonia Villar” and changed his name after marrying Corina Raigosa? I grew up in LA and didn’t even know that!)
For me, it is ALWAYS helpful to see how other REAL-LIVE people are thinking about things. And this question is immediately relevant to me right now. Emily and I have yet to make a final decision about last names.
Today we start a 7-part interview series with 7 married couples to find out how they came to a last name decision that felt right for everyone. I’m not only interested in the eventual decision; let’s really dig into the thinking and the progression of conversations!
For our first interview, we talk with a kickass couple – Alex and Nathan – who decided the last name question with a series of coin flips! At their wedding! With people cheering! Whaaa?! Let’s get everyone introduced and then dive right in!
Alex: Raised in Seattle by Texans, Alex enjoys eating spicy foods, playing/watching sports, and spending quality time with loved ones. She fights for social equity, and works for the federal government.
Nathan: Raised in Philadelphia by Minnesotans, Nathan is an attorney who values family, friends, and community. He spends his spare time cycling, reading fiction, and wishing he were better at the violin.
Unmarried Names: Alexandra Wakeman & Nathan Whitney Rouse
Married Names: Alexandra Wakeman Rouse & Nathan Whitney Rouse
Time to A Decision: 6-ish months
Time to Officially Change: 2 years and 1 month after getting hitched
Nathan: I’m Nathan Whitney Rouse, which is the same now as it was before getting married.
Alex: My unmarried name was Alexandra Wakeman. I didn’t have a middle name. That’s a family tradition. The women on my mom’s side weren’t given middle names so that after marriage they could keep their maiden names as their middle names.
Carlo: That’s some serious foresight. Do you know when that tradition started or who started it on your mom’s side of the family?
Alex: Actually, no. That’s a good question. I’m not sure exactly how it started… But my full name now is Alexandra Wakeman Rouse. I’m Alexandra because my mom majored in Russian and loved Russian names.
Carlo: Very cool. And Nathan, is there anything to know about the parts of your name?
Nathan: Well “Whitney” comes from my dad’s love of Mt. Whitney in California. That became my middle name and then when I was 12 years old, my dad and I hiked up Mt. Whitney together which was a really great experience.
Carlo: So what did your own parents do with their last name decision?
Nathan: Well my mom kept her maiden name. She was one of three children in her family – all daughters. She came from a traditional, Midwestern family. Her sisters got married and took their husbands’ last names so it was unique that my mom kept her last name. And the name itself is really unique: Sudtelgte (pronounced “suh-tell”)
Alex: It’s a Luxembourg-ian name.
Nathan: It’s definitely a unique last name. And my mom kind of preserved it for another generation. But she’s said more recently, “This name could end with me,” because it’s not been inherited after her, which is sad.
Carlo: What about growing up? Did your mom ever talk about her last name or her choice there?
Nathan: No. Not really at all. I remember by the time I noticed how it was for other kids and their families, I thought it was weird that other moms DID change their names. With my mom, I thought it was cool. It made sense. It always seemed arbitrary that my brother and I both got my dad’s name. I didn’t get why it should necessarily work like that.
Alex: When my parents got married, my mom took my dad’s last name. Later when they got divorced, my mom actually kept her married last name until she remarried. Then she took my stepdad’s last name.
Carlo: When was the first time that you thought to yourselves about what your last names might be if you ended up as life partners? And what did you think exactly?
Nathan: [Pause. Laughs.] This was several years ago. I remember hearing that Jack White, of the band The White Stripes, had taken Meg White’s last name when they got married. I thought it was an awesome thing and something I might want to do one day. This was before meeting Alex.
I’m trying to think about why exactly I wanted to do that…
Alex: Because you’ve got some feminist in you?
Nathan: It does go back to my mom – that she kept her last name and that it seemed random and unfair for all of the kids to get only my dad’s last name. So part of my motivation was about fairness and for other good reasons. But part of it was also hubris in that I wanted to stand apart and stand for my values. I can be honest about that. Taking my wife’s last name would have been a powerful outward expression of values.
Alex: You know, he offered it. He offered to take my last name. And actually, now I think, man I should have just taken you up on it!
Carlo: That’s interesting. Why do you say that?
Alex: Because having his last name is so weird! It’s taken me a long time to feel like I’m “Alex Rouse.” The timing worked out that I officially changed my last name right as I was starting grad school. So I had this new identity and at some point during the program I found out that two people were both referring to me but they didn’t know it for a long while because one of them knew me as “Alex Wakeman” and the other person knew me as “Alex Rouse.” When I found out about that, I definitely felt a loss of social capital. I’m conscious of that.
But at the same time, both Nathan and I wanted to be a family where everyone all shared the same last name.
Carlo: So, Nathan, since you were interested already in taking your wife’s name, and Alex, you seem to have wanted to keep your last name, is it fair to say that as you went into the coin toss competition at your wedding you were both kind of rooting for “Wakeman” to win?
Alex: I totally wanted “Wakeman” to win!
Nathan: Oh I was hoping to lose! It’s kind of too bad that “Rouse” won because that makes it harder now to tell the coin toss story and why we wanted to do it that way in the first place. But we still discuss potentially doing other things with our last names in the future…
Alex: We’ve had this idea to maybe change our last names back and forth every 10 years or so. Make it a decade by decade thing with “Wakeman” and “Rouse.” Who knows, that could be an option. We could be flexible.
Nathan: I think we’re okay with ideas like that in part because there’s not a ton of significance in either of our last names. We’re both white… And both of very mixed white heritage: England, Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg between us. But our families have been in the US for very many generations.
Alex: Meaning that our last names don’t reflect anything to us necessarily about our culture. Or about our cultural history.
Nathan: Right. And maybe our grandparents would disagree with that. Maybe they don’t feel that way. But it’s also about who’s getting married. [Laughs. Pause.] This thing happens when you plan a wedding and you find out that, like, your grandma will be upset if you don’t have a certain thing at the ceremony. And someone else in your family feels strongly about something else. There are considerations from lots of other people. But we have pretty awesome parents. When it came to last names, we didn’t have any pressure from them.
I did have close guy friends, though, who would say: “There’s no way you’d take her last name. You say that now but you wouldn’t really do it.” And that surprised me because these are guys that I’d say have similar outlooks and similar values to me. It’s really important to them that it be their last name… That’s preposterous.
I always felt like it was so arbitrary. And growing up sometimes I’d see mail or whatever addressed to my mom as “Mrs. Daniel Rouse.” I hated that! It’s crazy how completely unequal that is as a “standard.” There’s a complete lack of fairness.
Carlo: So I’m hearing a lot about the importance of fairness and what’s fair in a relationship. Is that what led to the coin toss idea? Because something like that is the clearest picture of fair odds? 50-50. I’m kind of thinking of the Batman villain, Two-Face, whose trademark is flipping a coin.
Nathan: That’s a good question. [Thinking]
Alex: Well, even coming up with how to do the coin toss idea was a process towards fairness. First we were just going to flip one coin. But then it was like, well who gets to flip it? That’s not fair. So eventually the way we did it was first we were each assigned a side of the coin.
Nathan: And this was during the wedding ceremony. And we didn’t really tell people about it beforehand. W e drew out of a hat so that one of us was “heads” and the other was “tails.” Then we both flipped coins. If a coin landed on heads then I’d get a point. If it landed on tails then Alex would get one.
Alex: It was a race to five. Our maid of honor and best man kept score for each of us on whiteboards. Some of our friends and guests found out that this was going to happen and they had made signs and were cheering for one name or the other. [Laughs] But it wasn’t even close! 6-2. It was a landslide!
Nathan: Yeah… It’s kind of a bummer because now out in the world it looks like I kept my name and Alex took my name just out of tradition. Whereas if I had changed my name, the story and our motivations would come up much more.
Alex: But the reason we stuck with it,
Nathan: Is because you’re stubborn?
Alex: [laughs] No, because if I had won I would have fully expected you to go through with it!
Nathan: Right. That’s true.
Carlo: So apart from what you wanted, it was important that you come up with a method of deciding that was fair. You didn’t necessarily want to make a move like “Men normally exercise this over women so in our relationship, the woman will exercise this over the man.” Is that right?
Nathan: Yeah, and we arrived at a good method. The means was very equitable. It’s just the outcome perpetuated what we were trying to call out.
Carlo: Can you walk us through the progression of how you went from your initial conversations about last names to a place where you both felt good about the coin flip plan? Were there any turning points or any realization moments you could point to?
Nathan: Umm, our style of communication is very… banter-y. [both laugh] We talked about it a fair amount throughout the planning process. And there were stages. First I offered to take her name. Then we kind of talked about a hyphenated last name…
Alex: But Nathan hates that, I learned. There was a time that I really thought that we would hyphenate, but… You can explain why you don’t like it.
Nathan: Well it’s not sustainable. If your kids have a hyphenated last name, what do they do when they get married? Double hyphenate? Or what if they get married to someone else with a hyphenated last name? Do they have four last names then?
Alex: I also know people who have created a brand new last name. For a while people were suggesting new last names for us. “Wakerouse” or “Rouseman.” But I hated that. And we at least wanted to be tied to one of our families.
Nathan: I guess we had the advantage of starting from a point where last name was a pretty insignificant thing. That question was on par with who was going to cater our wedding.
Alex: There were bigger questions. If we were going to get married at all was a bigger question. Because at the time in Washington state, gay marriage was being debated.
Nathan: Not yet gay marriage. It was domestic partnerships. R-71. Because R-74 came after we were married.
Alex: That’s right. Domestic partnerships. So “If” was a bigger question. Also what we were going to wear and why – those also ended up being bigger questions.
Nathan: I have to say, also, that I was in my first year of law school when we were wedding planning and I was just tired and really busy and moody. Alex probably did 90% of all the planning.
Alex: You picked it up though as the day got closer!
Nathan: Well yeah, I did more towards the end. But I remember that our conversations about last name were some of the most collaborative and enjoyable of the entire process. It was creative and fun. We knew we wanted the same last name. So it was really just: “How do we get there?”
Alex: Can I give some context to that? For me, the sense of family and togetherness was really crucial. And I know that Nathan’s mom had talked about going to school to pick up the kids and having to prove that she was their mom. Or being mistaken for a nanny… That kind of thing. I didn’t want that. So it was really important that for Nathan and me, our family have the same last name.
Nathan: Yes, that was an area where our values definitely aligned.
Carlo: Would you have any advice to a newly married couple that is having a hard time with the last name decision?
Nathan: I would stress the importance of listening, of course. And of respecting each other. Communication skills are always key. But I’d also say that it’s really important that you ask yourself why you care. For men especially, why do you care that it’s your name? A lot of the time I think it comes down to expectations and the guy not wanting to look like a “pussy” or whatever.
Alex: There’s probably a concern that it’s emasculating. That it’s not traditional.
Nathan: You have to ask why you care. If you ask seriously, the answers end up being pretty dark. There are a lot of assumptions in there about people, about society, about gender. It’s useful for a guy to examine his beliefs about marriage and to unpack that a bit.
Alex: And it’s useful for women. Really do some personal soul-searching and ask “What does my name mean to me?” I know a lot of women who just go with tradition without asking why. I also know women who have married and kept their maiden names but then when I ask about kids they immediately say “Well of course the kids would get their dad’s name.” It’s the “of course” that’s sometimes surprising to me.
Being a man in society comes with certain privileges. I’d encourage guys to think about what it’d be like to be a woman in a relationship and for it to be assumed that eventually you’ll be partly erased.
Well, “erased” is probably too dramatic. It doesn’t change who you are. I can go back and forth about it in my mind; there’s always the potential to overthink things. But what I’m saying is that the automation of it should be questioned.
Carlo: So Alex, when I say “Alexandra Wakeman Rouse” how does your name right now make you feel?
Alex: Now, I feel like that’s me. It’s taken a while to get to that point but now that’s who I am. For me, I’m noticing that it’s my first name that carries me. I’m Alex. My last name attaches me to others. I was attached by last name to my dad and other family members. Now I’m attached to you [Nathan]. But changing your last name doesn’t change who you are. I’m Alex.
Carlo: Nathan, when I say “Nathan Whitney Rouse” how do you feel about that?
Nathan: That is… It’s just my name. I’ve been called that for a long time. What’s weird is to hear it on the end of her name. I still think of Alex as “Alex Wakeman.” Still now, whenever Alex is on an alphabetical list, I go straight to the bottom of the list looking for the W’s.
Alex: Well, and one thing we haven’t talked about recently but is still very possible is for Nathan to change his middle name. But in some ways I wouldn’t want to do that because “Whitney” has meaning to your dad…
Carlo: You guys could always just find a Mt. Wakeman to climb up instead, right?
Nathan: [Laughs] Yeah! Or we could start a petition to change the name of Mt. Whitney to Mt. Wakeman!
