Unbroken Narratives of Life and Social Media

[leahbobet]

No, this is not about writing. Sorry. I have noticed people drifting out on that count, being my copious lack of talking about writing in the past few months. All I can say is that I'm really really stupidly busy right now, and once I'm settled into my still-fresh new dayjob and my sister's married off and my convocation's done (hello, autumn of major life changes) I will get back to the serious business of making books, yelling at them, and documenting this whole process for your pleasure.

This will be in approximately ten days to two weeks. Mark your calendars.

---

In the meantime, had a stray thought last night about social media (while poking around Facebook between turns in the epic death battle Scrabble game I'm playing with matociquala, stillsostrange, and tanaise).

I wonder if, in about ten years, people will just stop changing their names upon marriage.

Why? Well, it's already on the way out in North America for various social reasons. But the question is, well, one of social networking. Name changes make it ridiculously difficult to locate someone in the Internetverse; it's your best search string, the centre of your unique identifier -- not the whole of it for most people, but the centre. If you don't already have the information of the change, it's not impossible to corroborate that this is, in fact, the same person; there's always marriage announcements, things like that. But it's considerably harder than it would be otherwise, and you rely on people's archiving, on persistence and luck.

In looking through friends-of-friendslists last night, it occurred to me that there are people from most of my life I may not get a chance to reconnect with anymore. They've married and changed their names, and tracking them down will be difficult at best. The unbroken paper trail, data trail, public narrative of one's life is severed, at least partially, when you change your name. It's the same reason we keep our old e-mail addresses or send out change-of-address massmail when we change them; that LJ thought to automatically redirect links from an old LJ name to the new one upon a change; that we tend to stick to the same online handles/identities. So people can find us. If they come looking, we are here.

What I'm betting is that for those of us who grew up (to a partial degree, even) with that sense of...being receptive to connection, of carefully maintaining our data trail with either an eye to privacy or narrative completeness?

That's going to soon be more important than the social statement that changing one's family name at marriage is.

Now I just wait ten or twenty years and find out if I'm right.

Comments

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

Yeah for hyphens, baby. Win-win. (Of course, my name no longer fits on my driver's license, and people for whatever illiterate reason seem to think the second half of my last name is my first name. Oh well.)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I am perhaps odd in feeling like the hyphen would...still not be me? This appears to be my name, No Takebacks.

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

Growing up I HATED my last name with a passion. Partly because I hated my dad with a passion. Then when I got married (which I didn't want to do in the first place, but that's a whole other story) I realized I didn't want to change my name to match somebody else's either. I couldn't get rid of both so I smooshed 'em together. In any case, my maiden name is unique enough that if someone's looking for me, they'll find me.

Slight tangent: the absolute worst is when I get junk mail addressed to Mrs. [husband's first name] [husband's last name]. No, dickwad, I have MY VERY OWN NAME, THANK YOU.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I still occasionally get phone calls for Ms. !ExBoyfriend'sLastName. That, I find irksome.

[ringwoodcomics.livejournal.com]

This is why every hitched person on Facebook I know includes their full name.

So, Linda Baker Harris instead of just Linda Harris.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

For some reason, piles of my high school people don't. It's like musical chairs around there.

[delta-november.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

I don't acknowledge other people's name changes. If I know you, and you've given me a name to call you by, then it's mine. You don't get to take it back.

This policy has lead to a certain degree of friction over the years :P.

[amysisson.livejournal.com]

Ha! I think I like it!

I'm somewhat surprised that so many young women still ARE changing their names.

It's convenient being a writer sometimes. My husband knows perfectly well I wouldn't have changed my name no matter what, and he was more than OK with it. But when you're explaining to a 70-year-old British woman why her new granddaughter-in-law didn't change her name, it's convenient to be able to say "But Amy is a writer and she was already known by that name." (Definitely a fib in more ways than one; I hadn't had any fiction published when we got married 12 1/2 years ago!)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I suspect there's something attractive about it in the sense of...a symbol of a family unit. Of unity.

If it even ever comes up (these days, I suspect it won't), I probably won't be changing my name for the same reason. This is the one I plan to have on the books, and it'll just be simpler if that's the one on the legal documents too.

[mmarques.livejournal.com]

I changed my name, because I felt like my last name identified my father more than me. He's well known in his academic field, and in university, I had people often striking up conversations with me to learn more about him. Taking my husband's name felt like shaping my own identity.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Ack, yeah. That would be awkward, always being Someone's Daughter.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Heh. This is why I tend to default to nicknames for people in my head. They're labels I don't have to peel off. *g*

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

This policy has lead to a certain degree of friction over the years :P.

I imagine! I'd be pretty irritated if anyone I knew before I got married insisted on calling me by my maiden name. It's not my name anymore. I changed it, and I'd like people to respect that choice.

If I changed my name from Jodi to Leah, I'd like people to call me Leah. Last names are even easier, because mostly people don't have to say them to each other's faces. (Or computer screens.)

:)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

*huggles own name to chest*

*watches Jodi suspiciously*

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Fortunately I was just using you as an example! I loff my name because nobody (except a few people) has it. Used to not like it, though, and really wanted to go by my middle name. I'm glad I got over that.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Huh, really? I knew a bunch of Jodis as a kid.

Only ever knew one other Leah, though. I suspect I have an Old Lady Name. *g*

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Totally opposite! I knew several Leahs, and only a couple other Jodis. They were mean and I didn't like them. :)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Toronto and Austin are Opposite Day for each other!

Yeah, it's funny how there are names that I either like or hate based on if the first person I met with that name was a jackass or not.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

Interesting take, regarding the social networks. My wife and I tried to be progressive (not the actual reasoning) and we each took each other's names, sort of like the Nielsen Hayden.

Biggest pain in the ass we've ever done, and that includes getting a stupid loan to finance the wedding (now paid off). When we can spare the $$, we're each changing back to our pre-married names.

It was once important to me that she take my name, because I like tradition. I've realized over the last four years, and in less time than that, that it does not matter a single bit what her last name is when she comes home to me every day.

And it's been a pain finding married people on Facebook. :)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Huh. Interesting. Why was it a pain -- training other people to refer to it, or the paperwork?

It was once important to me that she take my name, because I like tradition. I've realized over the last four years, and in less time than that, that it does not matter a single bit what her last name is when she comes home to me every day.

...yes. That. :)

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

The combination of paperwork, remembering what accounts we changed to the double name and what remained single, and the fact that despite I was willing to combine her last name with mine - I didn't want to use it. Except legally, I pretty much ignore it. Four years later I finally changed my social security card to match my legal name.

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

My baby has the hyphen. His name is quite a mouthful. I tend to categorically chafe against the convention of the kid automatically taking the dad's name, I guess because of all the effort the mom puts in before the baby's even born. If, that is, the parents have different surnames. Just seems backwards to me. *shrug*

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I have always somewhat liked the convention in Spanish-speaking countries (although I can't remember anymore if it holds in all of them, and the internet isn't helping me out): Firstname Father'sfamilyname de Mother'sfamilyname. I think it does still run by the male line -- so you're using the mother's father's family name instead of the mother's mother's, but I like that...piece of acknowledgment in the system?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Heee. Feminist cooties! Oh noes!

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

I suspect any high school people who can't be arsed to look me up on MySpace or the alumni site just won't find me. I've already found most of them on MySpace (which my sister made me sign up for, for high school friends, sigh), where my name is Jodi (Lawrence) Meadows. I did the same thing on the alumni site. Because I do want to reconnect with them, if they're interested in reconnecting with me. (I think we're all to busy with our real lives to worry about the past, though. It's cool.)

However, comma, I don't think ease of my high school friends finding me is a reason not to change my name. I married Jeff. I moved into his house. We've had many chubby ferrets and a Kippy. He works hard to support my writing and yarn habits. Changing my name (I like Meadows better than Lawrence, anyway) in exchange for all the happiness he's given me? Not such a big deal. It's just a name.

(Besides, if I'd kept Lawrence, stalker ex boyfriend would still be stalking, now with lj and website ease. There are some *good* sides to breaking the paper trail. ;)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Boo stalker ex-boyfriends.

I suspect this also has a lot to do with...I guess, where one forms one's identity? I tend to feel like Leah Someothername would be a different person, in subtle ways I can't entirely articulate.