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Born on the generational cusp, Erin Hallstrom Erickson has a Generation X life with a Generation Y age. She 
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My name, and the morsel that is my brand, is undergoing a hyphendectomy.
My last names are both Swedish. Very Swedish. After two years of marriage, I’ve grown tired of writing, typing and saying a name that sounds like a room arrangement at IKEA.
I decided on Monday to undergo the operation: the removal of the hyphen that united my first 29 years with the next 50.
While I consider myself feminist-lite, my reason for hyphenating had nothing to do with retaining my sense of self. It had everything to do with my and my husband’s first names: Erin/Aaron. Yes, it’s true. There are a few geeky people out there that will marry a person with their same first name and I’m one of them.
I started thinking about my last name the minute my husband and I started talking about marriage. How do you differentiate yourself when you’ll share the exact same name? I imagined the screwed up phone calls with the doctor’s office or the IRS.
By the time we got married in 2005, I was bound and determined to be Mrs. Hyphenated-Name.
It’s been two years and everything I thought could go wrong didn’t. The doctor’s office never screwed up medical records because we don’t have a land line; if the office wants the Mrs. they call my cell phone. And the IRS? Our Social Security Numbers help eliminate that confusion.
I’d decided over the Thanksgiving break to pursue the hyphendectomy using Hil-Rod as my muse. Before you jump all over my politics, I didn’t say I wanted to be her; I’m just fond of her approach to her name as it relates to her brand. I’m rearranging my name so that my maiden name becomes my “middle” name and my married name is my official last name.
All of this name reconfiguration has raised quite a commotion at the office. I wrote a witty piece for an upcoming issue and my boss credited it to our newest employee: me, the unphyphened version. Everyone else has taken their jabs commenting on my hyphen-named personality versus my single-last-name personality. I’ve had several emails where coworkers have told me my maiden name is still on my email signature and that my voice mail still has my hyphenated name.
I can honestly say I’ve had more trouble slimming down to one last name than I did adding it.
Would I have removed the hyphen if I was already known for something huge? Probably not. It’s probably better that I haven’t become a huge success yet. I’ll leave that to my new name.
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If I were a woman, and I am not, I think I would do exactly what you have most recently stumbled up. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to consider a name change, and sometimes I try, but I really don’t care about it one way or another. I enjoy my name, but if I had to give it up, I don’t think it’d be a problem. (I realize I say that with about a .1% chance of actually ever realistically giving it up.)
My personal preference is against everything hyphenated. It’s awkward to say sometimes, people get lazy and only go by one or the other, and then it completely defeats the purpose of the hyphen. And from a practical standpoint, it just causes trouble name directories, emails, etc.
I’ve know a few women who’ve made the middle name shift, and to me this seems like the best option. The middle name is most often a useless filler, and unless you’ve got a double name like Mary Beth or something similar (don’t even get me started on that hyphenated variation) it’s probably not that big of a deal. And worst case, you have two middle names.
The hyphen has always seemed like the worst option out there, and the maiden/middle name switch the best…but the male anatomy has always had less credibility on the issue.
My wife hypenated her last name when we got married, mainly due to the fact that all the networking she did in law school was based on her maiden name. And depending on what area of law she ends up in (prosecution being one of them), she might go back to the maiden name for safety purposes. Doesn’t bother me at all. Our son, however, only has my last name. Compromise!
My husband already had a hyphenated last name. When we got married, I told him I only wanted one last name so he insisted I take his dad’s. I have had it for two years now and I hate it. I think I’m going to change it to his mom’s name, but I’m not looking forward to going through all the paperwork
Using your maiden name as your middle name when you marry is a common practice in the South or at least the part I was raised in. I think it’s odd when women don’t do this more often, perhaps because I have no sentimental attachment to my own middle name as it is merely my mother’s maiden name - Jackson.
Naming and branding for women is a tricky issue. One I’ve struggled with a lot, I might add. I haven’t decided yet what I will do on my official name once I marry my blandly-last-named beau, but since taking his name would make me one of 20,000 or so Tiffany’s of that name, I think I will be keeping my maiden name at least as my writing name. I’m not really a fan of the hyphenated name, and since that would give me about three syllables followed by eight, I’ve got to find a different solution!
Thanks for sharing your insights!
Thanks for bringing this up. I’m going through the same thing right now myself, but it also involves my webpage. I own the domain for my firstnamelastname.com. My firstnamemarriedname.com is taken. New iterations of my initials are taken. I have until October, but for now I’m stumped.